If you've seen a news article in recent weeks announcing the 2025 word of the year, you could be forgiven for wondering: what, just one more?
Depending on which dictionary you consult, this year's term of choice was either Collins's, “vibration coding”, “parasocial” from Cambridge Dictionaries or their competitor Oxford University Press “fury bait” – and, in addition, many other options.
Since its inception 35 years ago, when American Dialect Society Trying to find a word that could sum 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 awards season.
“There are dozens of them now,” said Jonathon Green, a writer and lexicographer who specializes in the evolution of slang. “It seems to me that if you have anything to do with the publication of a reference book or, of course, any dictionary, you are obliged to release something from it.”
Other linguists suggest that the final choice is made more to attract public attention than as a result of any in-depth linguistic analysis.
Robbie Love, a sociolinguist at Aston University in Birmingham, says the lexicographers behind sampling themselves are aware that it is not a “fully objective scientific process”, otherwise “you [would] find the same words…they will all make it look different.”
Vaclav Brezina, professor of linguistics at Lancaster University, said: “Word of the year is seen quite narrowly, so it's a word that captures people's imagination and the imagination of lexicographers in that particular year.
“I don’t think the purpose of the word of the year is to provide a scientific analysis of the English language… [it] more to get our attention.”
Much of this imagination is increasingly being shaped online, according to data analysis by the Guardian, which has measured the frequency of use of Cambridge, Collins and Oxford's word of the year picks since 2010. More than a third of the selected words are either internet slang terms or owe their meaning to technological devices. From 2021, this figure will rise to two thirds for words of the year.
Lynne Murphy, professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, isn't surprised. “I think it's inevitable because words spread so easily these days. So everyone is much more aware of new words. Plus, we're living in a really active time of technological change.”
However, given the fleeting nature of much online content, it can be expected that not many previously chosen words have stood the test of time. Oxford's 2022 Choice “goblin mode” – “a type of behavior that is unapologetic self-indulgence… in a way that defies social norms or expectations” – may ring a bell, but is rarely used these days. Cambridge's 2018 choice of “nomophobia” (fear of being without a phone) is also unclear. According to an analysis of the Internet news corpus, the use of NFT or non-fungible token (Collins, 2021) and “youthquake” (Oxford, 2017) have also decreased significantly, by 96% and 92% respectively.
Some fell out of favor for good reason. Words such as Brexit, vaccination and lockdown referred to a period in social history whose relevance may have faded, although its effects are still being felt. Others, including austerity measures and the climate emergency, have waxed and waned along with political developments and changing priorities, although it is hard to imagine David Cameron's “big society” ever returning.
On the lack of longevity, Jonathan Dent, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, said: “Whether the word of the year will survive as an active and widely accepted part of the language in the long term is actually less important. [than] that he has something to say about where we are now, this year.
“If a Word of the Year candidate retains the type of usage that led to its selection, it is a sign that English speakers and writers have found it a useful addition to their linguistic repertoire. If it doesn't, that doesn't mean the word wasn't a relevant and worthwhile choice in the year it was chosen.”
While some linguists such as Murphy may be “a little cynical about some of the attention-grabbing vocabulary words of the era” and view the annual ritual as a “marketing tool”, others are less skeptical about the exercise.
Love said: “I would in no way interpret [word of the year] as a prediction of how the word might be used in the future.
“I think it's just a fun way to get people talking about language, and especially if they're fairly consistent in choosing words that are probably more likely to be used by young people in online discourse, then it's a great way to get young people into these sorts of conversations about language and words.”
To sum it up: don't expect the word of the year to outlive it.
“It’s marketing,” Green said. “I mean, does it work, that's another side of the story… [but] does the public really feel like ‘this sums up the year I just lived’?”
