Wordorigins.org

The Oxford English Dictionary has 8 words with first citations from 2001. In that year, a Chinese fighter jet bumps a U. S. E-3 surveillance aircraft, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the U. S. plane to land in Hainan, China where the crew was detained for ten days; Islamic terrorists fly two hijacked passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and a fourth crashing into a field in Pennsylvania; the U. S. invades Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists and depose the Taliban government that supported them; the energy-trading firm Enron files for bankruptcy; Peter Jackson’s film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring hits the theaters; Wikipedia is launched; and the iPod makes its debut.