Is it time to add shovel-ready to the dictionary?

By Dana Hartline

ATLANTA (April 24, 2009) - Anyone following discussions about The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the economic stimulus package) has undoubtedly heard the word shovel-ready--numerous times.  It's quickly become the buzzword to define projects or initiatives that should be (or want to be) funded.

Wikipedia only offers a brief, three-sentence definition including notation of the utterance of the words by President Barack Obama in December of 2008 in a Meet the Press interview that likely became the trigger moment for shovel-ready becoming one of the most frequently used adjectives in stimulus conversation.  In fact, by early January, the Washington Post was already calling shovel-ready the Obama buzzword that "hit pay dirt."

Look it up today and you'll likely find:

• More than 2,000 pieces of news coverage mentioning shovel ready over the past month--including more than 350 in the past wee
• Approximately 42,500 blog posts on the topic (add one more with this post)

• Roughly 715,000 mentions throughout the Web

Shovel ready isn't yet in Merriam-Webster's dictionary, but perhaps it should be.  In fact, I think I'll submit it to their open dictionary now. Agh, it looks like someone beat me to it on December 30.  Darn you, J.C. Moore of Pennsylvania.

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Is it time to add shovel-ready to the dictionary?