Winning/Winner
Actor Charlie Sheen gave new meaning to winner and winning this year. Once upon a time, the verb win meant "to be victorious." But Sheen constantly used the word during his slow, painful walk off the sanity plank — styling himself as a "winner" and his lifestyle choices as "winning" as he spoke of his "warlock brain" and "tiger blood." He lost his role on the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men. He sold out shows for his Violent Torpedo of Truth live tour, which bombed. And he came to physically resemble a pasty raisin. Though he tried to account for the error of his ways months later, Charlie Sheen had solidified a definition for the term that goes something like this: winning (v.): "participating in an ostensibly drug-induced, highly public flameout, during which one loses an incredibly lucrative job and, subsequently, the respect of the American people." Or more, succinctly: winning (v.): losing.