James Gorman announces in The New York Times that "the age of 'omes' is here." The culprit for the spread of omes — from proteome to microbiome and, now, the omome — is genome, a word that he traces back to Hans Winkler in 1920 — but that didn't take off until the 1990s or so. "Various experts had differing ideas on where the suffix came from, but it seems to be one that was made up," Gorman says. "In any case, it clearly meant the totality of something." He adds that he likes the idea the omome — "the ome of all the omes" — which may be fun though not practical to study.
Some of the new words, however, have had the misfortune of receiving Jonathan Eisen's "Worst New Omics Award" — an honor he most recently bestowed upon the "sexome."