I'm wondering if there is a word that describes popular, short-lived words or expressions? Think of "hanging-chad", a word most people had never heard of, then you heard it everyday for months, then it disappeared.
Maybe the word I'm looking for, if it even exists, is used to describe the phenomenon as opposed to the words themselves.
Best Answer
Quite a few writers have used fad word and fad expression just in the sense you mean. A fad is off course “something that people are interested in for only a short period of time” (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary). Here are some actual, self-explanatory examples (my boldface in all quotes):