\n<\/p>\n
If you have seen a news story declaring 2025\u2019s chosen \u201cword of the year\u201d in recent weeks, you might be forgiven for asking yourself: what, another one?<\/p>\n
Depending on which dictionary you turn to, the chosen term this year was either Collins\u2019s \u201cvibe coding\u201d, \u201cparasocial\u201d from Cambridge Dictionaries or their Oxford University Press rival\u2019s \u201crage bait\u201d \u2013 with many other selections besides.<\/p>\n
From its origins 35 years ago, when the American Dialect Society attempted to find a word capable of summing up the past 12 months, this particular Americanism crossed the Atlantic in the mid-2000s and has since established itself as the closest thing the English language has to an awards season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s dozens now,\u201d said Jonathon Green, an author and lexicographer who specialises on the evolution of slang. \u201cIt seems to me that if you have anything to do with publishing a reference book, or certainly a dictionary of some sort, you are duty-bound to come out with one of these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other linguists suggest that the final choices are selected more to attract public attention than by any deep linguistic analysis.<\/p>\n
Robbie Love, a sociolinguist based at Aston University, in Birmingham, says that the lexicographers behind the selections are themselves aware that it is not an \u201centirely objective, scientific process\u201d, otherwise \u201cyou [would] find the same words \u2026 they all will ensure that they\u2019re different\u201d.<\/p>\n
Vaclav Brezina, a professor of linguistics at Lancaster University, said: \u201cThe considerations for the word of the year is fairly narrow, so it is a word that captures people\u2019s imagination and the lexicographer\u2019s imagination in that particular year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the purpose of the word of the year is really to give scientific analysis of the English language \u2026 [it] is more to draw our attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Based on data analysis conducted by the Guardian, which measured the frequency of usage for words of the year chosen by Cambridge, Collins and Oxford since 2010, much of that imagination is increasingly being forged online. More than a third of chosen words are either internet slang terms or owe their meanings to technological devices. The figure rises to two-thirds for words of the year from 2021.<\/p>\n
Lynne Murphy, a professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, is not surprised. \u201cI think that\u2019s sort of inevitable because that\u2019s the way that words are spreading really easily these days. So, everybody\u2019s much more aware of new words. There\u2019s also just the fact that we\u2019re in a really active time of technological change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet with the fleeting nature of much online content, it is perhaps to be expected that not many previously chosen words have stood the test of time. Oxford\u2019s choice in 2022, \u201cgoblin mode\u201d \u2013 \u201ca type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent \u2026 in a way that rejects social norms or expectations\u201d \u2013 may ring a bell but is now rarely used. Cambridge\u2019s 2018 pick, \u201cnomophobia\u201d \u2013 the fear of being without your phone \u2013 is similarly obscure. NFT or non-fungible token (Collins, 2021) and \u201cyouthquake\u201d (Oxford, 2017) have also significantly decreased in use, by 96% and 92% respectively, according to analysis of the News on the Web corpus.<\/p>\n
Some have fallen out of popularity for good reason. Words such as Brexit, vax and quarantine spoke to a particular time in social history whose urgency may have faded, even as its after-effects remain felt. Others, including austerity and climate emergency, have waxed and waned in tandem with political developments and changing priorities, although it is hard to imagine David Cameron\u2019s \u201cbig society\u201d ever making a comeback.<\/p>\n
On the lack of longevity, Jonathan Dent, a senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, said: \u201cWhether a word of the year survives as an active and widely recognised part of the language in the long term is really less important [than] that it has something to say about where we are now, this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a candidate for word of the year maintains the kind of usage that led to its selection, that\u2019s a sign that speakers and writers of English have found it a useful addition to their linguistic toolkit. If it doesn\u2019t, that doesn\u2019t mean it wasn\u2019t a relevant and worthwhile choice in the year it was chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some linguists such as Murphy can be \u201ca little bit cynical about some of the dictionary words of the years being about attention grabbing\u201d and consider the annual ritual as \u201ca marketing tool\u201d, others view the exercise with less scepticism.<\/p>\n
Love said: \u201cI would not in any way interpret [word of the year] as being a prediction one way or the other of how that word might be used in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just a fun way of getting people to talk about language, and particularly if they\u2019re choosing words fairly consistently that are probably more likely to be used by younger people in online discourse, then that is a great way of engaging younger people with these sorts of conversations about language and words.\u201d<\/p>\n
In summary: don\u2019t expect a word of the year to outlast it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s marketing\u201d, Green said. \u201cWhether it works, I mean, that\u2019s another side of it \u2026 [but] is it really something that the public feel \u2018this sums up the year I have just lived\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have seen a news story declaring 2025\u2019s chosen \u201cword of the year\u201d in recent weeks, you might be forgiven for asking yourself: what, another one? Depending on which dictionary you turn to, the chosen term this year was either Collins\u2019s \u201cvibe coding\u201d, \u201cparasocial\u201d from Cambridge Dictionaries or their Oxford University Press rival\u2019s \u201crage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[21527,21528,7319,2067,14190,455,3787,1569],"class_list":{"0":"post-39811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-bait","9":"tag-goblin","10":"tag-language","11":"tag-mode","12":"tag-rage","13":"tag-real","14":"tag-words","15":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}