The Year In Buzzwords

SPIDER HOLE Within hours, Saddam's sad hideaway resurrected a term not heard much since Vietnam.

METROSEXUAL A heterosexual with hair gel, as popularized by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and British soccer god David Beckham. By year's end it was already on the way out.

BLOGGING Those opinionated Web logs this year went from Beltway delicacy to mass-audience fare.

JOBLESS RECOVERY Yes, there's record productivity growth, but why are so many ex-investment bankers still working at the Gap?

SPIRALING That darned federal budget deficit. Never just rising; always spiraling out of control.

CROAD MAP Maybe the reason the Administration's Middle East peace plan went nowhere is that it was given such a pedestrian name.

NASCAR DADS Soccer moms are so 2000; these white, middle-class Southern males may swing the 2004 election.

MARKET TIMING The in-and-out trading of mutual-fund shares. We didn't know what it was until we learned we were being cheated by it.

SUNNI TRIANGLE The area around the Iraqi cities of Baghdad, Tikrit and Fallujah--where U.S. forces have met the most resistance--has become as familiar as the Tristate area.

BENNIFER Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez--or that annoying couple you always see making out in the gossip pages.

--By Sean Gregory