The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as “Word(s) of the Year” and abbreviated “WOTY” (or “WotY“), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year from: Wikipedia)
Another one of my favorite and recurring topics. Different dictionaries like Cambridge, Oxford, Merriam Webster, Collins, dictionary.com come up with WOTY lists every year. The ways they choose differ slightly and a brief summary of how they decide can be interesting for an introduction to the topic. Most dictionaries, though, choose the words that were looked up most frequently on their websites. The Wikipedia entry (above) describes some of them.
For the first time in its history of chosing the Word of the Year, OxfordLanguages (from Oxford University Press) has changed its precedure and let the public decide. 300 000 readers cast a vote.
For this year’s post on WTY, I decided to focus on only two sources, the British Oxford Languages from above and the US American Merriam Webster.
The words listed:
Most looked up words in 2022 from Merriam-Webster
- Queen Consort
- Raid
- Loamy
- Sentient
- LGBTQIA
- Codify
- Omicron
- Oligarch
- Gaslighting
And the winner is…..
List from Oxfordlanguages
- metaverse
- #IstandWith
- Goblin mode
And the winner is …