“It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away,’ sang the BeeGees in a romantic hit. The enduring power and influence of words is probably never more manifest than in love though the Bard might contest that as he said, “Words are easy like the wind.” And yet there is no contesting that words are the foundation of sharing knowledge, which is particularly important considering the world is at a stage when everything is being driven by knowledge, most of all in the form of artificial intelligence.
It is that time of the year when lexicographers are busy analysing the use of words that best capture the social trends and events of the last 11 months. And naturally enough, “polarisation” came up trumps, pardon the pun, in the Merriam Webster dictionary in election year when about two billion if the world’s people voted, but none more polarised by the politics of division and hate than the Americans. They chose Donald Trump whose reign is certain to coin more words to feature as “word of the year” in time to come.
TikTok may be banned in India and faces one in the USA too, but its effect on social trends is an undeniable facet of modern life. A word mentioned on it sarcastically by a transwoman became the dictionary.com pick — “demure”, as in “so demure, so mindful” that became a talking point. Everyone, from US President Biden who used it to describe his signing off on student debt to brand-conscious celebrities, lipping it to indicate they are in clover.
“Demure”, along with Cambridge’s “manifest” as in “to manifest” in the sense of “to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief doing so will make it more likely to happen", comprised the happy part of the year’s word hunt. And then came the warning of where the world is going in this hyper connected world of the “www” as Oxford’s 19th century word “brainrot” serves to remind everyone of the dangers of deterioration of one’s mental or intellectual state owing to overconsumption of trivial content, especially on social media.
The concept of word of the year is German and around 30 years old, but Australian Macquarie “enshittification” could claim originality that encapsulates the thoughts of many that institutions, great and small, are going towards the unmentionable, as are goods and services, especially online platform driven by the profit motive. Well, the good, the bad and the ugly of the “word” as the ultimate tool of communication is out there for the year.
