Come the end of the year, and we see various lists, rankings, selections ,’ Best of..’, ‘..of the Year’, and what have you. For me, the most interesting of these is the Word of the Year, or WOTY.
Word of the Year is what is considered the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year. It is supposed to capture the zeitgeist of the year gone by. There is no THE Word of the Year. There are several Words of the Year, assessed and declared by several bodies—dictionaries, learned societies, etc.
The tradition started in German when the first Wort des Jahres was selected in 1971. The word was aufmüpfig, meaning rebellious or insubordinate.
The first English WOTY was declared by the American Dialect Society’s in 1990, and was bushlips, meaning insincere political rhetoric (from Bush’s ‘read my lips’ comment). The American Dialect Society (ADS) is a learned society, not connected to any commercial interest, and their WOTY is picked by vote of independent linguists, though anyone can nominate a word at any time of the year. As appropirate for a seriously academic institution, ADS really gets into the issue, defining several categories apart from overall WOTY, including: Most useful/Most Likely to Succeed WOTY; Political WOTY; Digital WOTY; Informal WOTY; Acronym/Initialism of the Year; AI-related WOTY; Most Creative WOTY; and Euphemism of the Year. While all other organizations declare WOTYs at the end of the given year, ADS comes out with it’s in the beginning of the next year.
As we have seen from the newspapers, several other organizations also pick their own WOTYs, using different methodologies. Here is a look at some of the popular ones and how they are selected:
Oxford WOTY
‘The candidates for the Word of the Year are drawn from evidence gathered by our extensive language research program, including the Oxford Corpus, which gathers around 150 million words of current English from web-based publications each month. Sophisticated software allows our expert lexicographers to identify new and emerging words and examine the shifts in how more established words are being used.
Dictionary editors also flag notable words for consideration throughout the year and use other sources of data to identify contenders.
We regularly take into account the many suggestions sent to us via social media.
The final Word of the Year selection is made by the Oxford Languages team on the basis of all the information available to us.’ (https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/)
Cambridge WOTY
‘The candidates for the Word of the Year are drawn from evidence gathered by our extensive language research program, including the Oxford Corpus, which gathers around 150 million words of current English from web-based publications each month. Sophisticated software allows our expert lexicographers to identify new and emerging words and examine the shifts in how more established words are being used.
Dictionary editors also flag notable words for consideration throughout the year and use other sources of data to identify contenders.
We regularly take into account the many suggestions sent to us via social media.
The final Word of the Year selection is made by the Oxford Languages team on the basis of all the information available to us.’ (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/editorial/word-of-the-year)
Dictionary.com
‘Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year and short-listed nominees capture pivotal moments in language and culture. These words serve as a linguistic time capsule, reflecting social trends and global events that defined the year. The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage; it reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we’ve changed over the year. And for these reasons, Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year is demure.’ (https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year)
Merriam-Webster WOTY
‘When the Word of the Year was started in 2003, Merriam-Webster determined which words would appear on the list by analyzing page hits and popular searches to its website. For example, the 2003 and 2004 lists were determined by online hits to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus and to Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com.
In 2006 and 2007, Merriam-Webster changed this practice, and the list was determined by an online poll among words that were suggested by visitors to the site. Visitors were requested to vote for one entry out of a list of twenty words and phrases. The list consisted of the words and phrases that were frequently looked up on the site and those that were submitted by many readers.
From 2008 onwards, however, user submissions have not been a deciding factor, and the list has been composed only of the words which were looked up most frequently that year. Merriam-Webster said that the reason for the change was that otherwise ordinary words were receiving so many hits that their significance could not be ignored.’ (https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year)
The Oxford WOTY 2024 is brain rot, which is ‘any Internet content deemed to be of low quality or value, or the supposed negative psychological and cognitive effects caused by it’.
The Cambridge WOTY for the year is manifest, meaning ‘to speak your dreams into existence. It’s also associated with the practice of visualizing goals to achieve them’.
And stop press! Merriam-Webster has just declared polarization as its WOTY. While polarization means division into two sharply contrasting group, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large clarified further that in the context of their choice. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”
If only we could ‘manifest’ ‘brain rot’ and ‘polarization’ away, wouldn’t that make for a great 2025!
–Meena
Millennial Matriarchs 