Posts Tagged: word of the year

  • Cartoon image of a person drowning in AI slop (the Word of the Year 2025)

    Word of the Year 2025

    Every year the world’s major English dictionaries publish their word of the year for 2025 (WOTY25). It can be an interesting window into the political, social and cultural drivers of our world. Dictionaries from the “Anglosphere” give us insights into how our changing vocabulary reflects our changing lives. So unsurprisingly the collection of WOTYs from […]

  • Cartoon image of a woman at a laptop with caption: Enshittification The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking

    Enshittification—a modern decline

    This week the Macquarie Dictionary (MD) has chosen its word of the year (WOTY) for 2024 as “enshittification” (28 November 2024). In this they are behind the American Dialect Society that chose it as its WOTY 2023. I have been meaning to blog about it for a few months now, after my IT guy nudged […]

  • Editorial cartoon illustrating the 2023 Word of the Year, femwashing, with a staged corporate feminism campaign surrounded by smaller illustrations of the shortlisted words, including greenwashing, artificial intelligence, bowdlerisation and petfluencer.

    Our word of the year 2023 – FEMWASHING

    What is a word of the year? Over the last few weeks the world’s dictionaries have announced their words of the year (WOTY). The results have not been that exciting. Most have honed in on the big advances in artificial intelligence and its associated vocabulary. The Macquarie chose cozzie liv, leaving everybody a bit cold; […]

  • Tim Entwisle — I have no rizz whatsoever

    Putting on the “rizz”

    The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) word of the year (WOTY) for 2023 is “rizz”. It has been selected from a pool of candidates gathered by Oxford’s language research program. The competition for WOTY is designed to spotlight recently coined words or expressions, that capture the essence of the previous year and possess the potential for […]

  • IMAGE: Steam punk piggy banks CAPTION: Macquarie Dictionary word of the year 2023 COZZIE LIVS

    Macquarie Dictionary ignores AI in WOTY choice

    I look forward to this time of year because many of the international dictionaries announce their words of the year (WOTY). Lexicographers (dictionary writers) try to pick neologisms (new words) or newly fashionable words that represent the important events, developments or preoccupations of the year. Past WOTY winners During the coronavirus the Oxford English Dictionaries […]

  • Gaslighting is a common term that means manipulating someone by psychological means into doubting their own sanity.

    The meaning of gaslighting

    Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary publisher, has just chosen gaslighting as its word of the year for 2022. They based this on the number of searches on their website for the word which spiked by 1,740% in 2022. They stated that “In this age of misinformation—of ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged […]

  • Vaccination expressions for VAX as the word of the year 2021

    Vax—Word of the Year 2021—Oxford Languages

    OR … IF YOU TURN INTO A CROCODILE THATS YOUR PROBLEM The Oxford Languages (Oxford University Press) word of the year for 2021 is vax. Vax is a colloquial shortening of either vaccine or vaccination as a noun and vaccinate as a verb. It has been used in the vaxed, double-vaxed, unvaxed, and the scourge […]

  • the second most important event of 2020 was the US election played out in against the back-drop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

    WORD OF THE YEAR 2020—POLITICS AND THE US ELECTION

    Perhaps the second most important event of 2020 was the US election played out against the back-drop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. Here we look at words from politics and the US election for 2020  (I have borrowed a photo from the Trump Tie Meme). The OED reported that in the early […]

  • Picture of young man with chopsticks—headline life during the pandemic

    WORD OF THE YEAR 2020—LIFE DURING THE PANDEMIC

    There is nothing really new to say about the unusual year of 2020 but we can review the way the events affected our vocabulary. In my previous post I looked at the pandemic itself. In this post, I look at the main words that came into being as a result of the way it changed […]

  • Image of nurse in developing nation with headline—WORDS OF THE YEAR 2020 THE GREAT PANDEMIC

    WORD OF THE YEAR 2020—THE GREAT PANDEMIC

    As we enter a new year it is a good time to look back at the year we have just left. There is nothing new to say about how unusual 2020 was but it is interesting to look at the way the events affected our vocabulary. The words we used in 2020  give an indication […]

  • Single use from Collins https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty

    WOTY18—the words of the year 2018

    Many of the English-speaking world’s leading dictionaries have published their Word of the Year for 2018 (WOTY18). The words are not always new, but they have been prominently used in the past year. The WOTY can be a word or a “vocabulary item” (acronyms, phrases, etc). Some organisations have committees to decide their WOTY; others […]