Today, we aim to present language as a sign of the times, a reflection of the present situation, and to briefly consider the ever-interesting aspect of the evolution of language through the events that affected life as we know it in a particular year. The word or even words of the year refers to any of the many assessments regarding the most important word or concept or expression in the public sphere during a specific year.

Word me up before you go-go

The German tradition, Wort des Jahres, started in 1971. The oldest English-language version is that of the American Dialect Society, which has named a word of the year since 1990, when the word of the year was bushlips, which means insincere political rhetoric, according to the American Dialect Society's website. It originates from George H.W. Bush's infamous “read my lips: no new taxes” speech given in 1988, which ended up being a broken promise.

The word or expression of the year is announced after the end of each calendar year, after being determined by a vote of independent linguists, lexicographers, dictionary editors, whereby many suggestions sent via social media are also taken into account in the process.

There are many organizations and many countries around the world that announce Words of the Year. The American Dialect Society also chooses the Word of the Decade (for the 1990s it was web, for the 2000s it was google) and even the Word of the 20^th century, which is jazz.

The American Way

The list compiled by the America Dialect Society is rather US-specific, since it reflects a political or social situation in the States, but there are some words on the list that may be considered relevant globally. For example, words of the year in 2009 and 2010, were tweet (a short, timely message sent via Twitter.com, and verb, the act of sending such a message) and app, respectively. Other examples includes cyber (1994), the prefix e-(1998), 9/11 (2001), metrosexual (2003), tweet (2009) and app (2010).

The same goes for the most commonly used word in 2012, which is hashtag (a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#), used on Twitter to mark a topic or make a commentary), and this selection further supports the claim that the language evolves with how the world turns, referring in this context to the immense spread and impact of social media, internet in general, and the changing sentiment of the times.

The word or, better yet, the phrase of the year in 2017 was fake news, ingeniously laying grounds for the word of the year in 2020, which, of course, was Covid, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the amount of fake news (still) surrounding the entire phenomenon. In its most recent, the 32^nd annual vote for the word of the year, the American Dialect Society, selected insurrection, which is connected with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Even though coup, sedition (overt conduct enticing toward rebellion against the established order) and riot were used to describe the event, it seems that insurrection (denotes violent attempt to take control of the government) best embodies the happening on that day.

The British Way

Oxford University Press, which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries, has announced their UK Word of the Year and US Word of the Year, which are sometimes the same word, since 2004. The first winner was the word chav, a British pejorative term used to describe an anti-social lower-class youth dressed in sportswear. The word or expression is chosen from a list of many candidates, but the winner is carefully debated and considered after deciding that it best reflects the mood or the general sentiment of a particular year, and that it is culturally significant.

The Word of the Year does not necessarily have to been coined within the past twelve months but it must have become prominent or notable during the year. As noted earlier, the association selects words of the year separately for US and UK and that is because each country’s vocabulary develops in different ways according to what is happening in culture, society and in the news. For example, the UK word of 2005 was sudoku, and in the US it was podcast.

The Collins English Dictionary also announce their Word of the Year every and have been doing so since 2013, when they selected geek. Other honourable mentions include photobomb (2014), binge-watch (2015), Brexit (2016), single-use (2017), lockdown (2020).

More than words

The following list contains English language words of the year on both sides of the Atlantic for the past decade. Want to guess what the word for 2022 might be? Give your ideas in the comments sections below… We’re eagerly anticipating your suggestions!

Do you have any better suggestions for words of the year?

Perhaps for 2007 you would rather choose avocado, because you swear this was the year you fell in love with avocado and American “subprime” or the British “carbon footprint” (for UK, the US choice by the Oxford languages was “locavore”, i.e. one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible) can’t even hold a candle to it. And maybe chad (not the country, but a piece of waste material removed from card or tape by punching; from the controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election), which is the American choice for word of the year 2000, means nothing to you, and your word of that year could easily be something else, like “millennium”, “century”, “ch-ch-changes” or “bush”.