What's in a word? A nation's outlook and more

It is that time of the year, again. With 2011 almost behind us, people around the world are voting for the word that is most representative of the year.

In China, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, the Commercial Press, sina.com.cn and the China Youth News organized a poll for experts and netizens to name their word of choice. Most of the respondents chose the character kong.

Kong is a polysemous verb meaning "regulate and control", or "accuse", or "turn (a container) upside down to let the liquid trickle out". But for Chinese, "control" is the meaning of choice - against last year's phrase zhang (price rise).