Top words of 2019: They're very telling

As each year approaches its final sunset, the world’s biggest dictionaries announce a “Word of the Year,” typically as rife with social meaning as their search numbers imply.

This year, English-speakers have been pondering their existence.

They (Merriam-Webster): For America’s first dictionary, Merriam-Webster (debuted as “Webster’s” in 1806), 2019’s top-searched word was “they.”

What does it mean that a simple pronoun could top lookups? A change in meaning, apparently. Or at least in one of them.

English is one of only a few of the world’s thousands of languages that does not have a gender-neutral pronoun. I’m talking about more than the binary vs. nonbinary gender issue here.

Think about how often in speech unknowns necessitate a substitute for or alternative to “he” or “she.” English speakers first used “they” — even when the reference is singular — at least six centuries ago. Plus, according to Webster’s, “they” has also long been used “to refer to an unknown or unspecified person.”

Today it’s about more than that, as our understanding of gender is shifting. Lacking an alternative, “they” in singular form is increasingly used in books, social media, and daily interaction to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary — a use Merriam-Webster’s calls well-established in the English language.

Merriam-Webster lookups for “they” increased by 313 percent in 2019 over the previous year, so they added this meaning to their dictionary listings in September: “used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary.”

Climate emergency (Oxford): Yes, Oxford English Dictionary originated in England, but nevertheless remains a primary authority on our common language. The 2019 Oxford Word of the Year 2019 is “climate emergency” (phrases are listed in dictionaries, too).

Defining climate emergency as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it,” Oxford said in a statement, “heightened public awareness of climate science and the myriad implications for communities around the world has generated enormous discussion …”

Oxford’s data showed that the phrase “climate emergency” was used this year a staggering 100 times more often than it was in 2018. But it’s not just the climate conversation, concerns and debates that caught their attention.

It’s also the way the word “emergency” is used.

In 2018, Oxford says, “climate” did not feature in the top words typically used to modify “emergency.” Instead the top types of emergencies people wrote about were health, hospital, and family — modifiers both more acute, and more personal.

So what’s shifting is the perception and use of the word “emergency” as both longer-term and commonly felt, beyond an individual or family. (This includes the counter-emergency position, at least linguistically.) Perhaps, Oxford implies, English-speakers are seeing their collective lives as more immediately connected, wherever they fall in the debate.

Existential (Dictionary.com). Given the preceding two, this Word of the Year seems to wrap it up nicely. We are, at least more publicly, pondering our very existence, whether at the individual level or as a planetary whole.

Dictionary.com defines existential in two ways:

1. “of or relating to existence.” Entering English in the late 1600s, this “existential” is often used when the fact of someone or something’s being — its very existence — is at stake. Put another way, the fact of survival.

2. “concerned with the nature of human existence as determined by the individual’s freely made choices.” Since the early 1900s, this meaning is the root of existentialism, a philosophy affirming the individual’s role in his own life, in making meaningful, authentic choices (think Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre).

In case you’re wondering about the term “existential crisis” (oft-understated in social media and common speech), that term refers to a psychological episode in which a person deeply questions the meaning of life, of all that exists, and of their (as in he she or they) own existence.

Dictionary.com reports that searches for “existential” increased throughout 2019, but what caught their attention was the timing. Spikes hit after politicians used the word to characterize dangers and disruptions predicted with climate change, after hurricanes and big fires, and speeches by young Greta Thunberg (plus massive gun violence).

So you might say that word-seekers’ “climate emergency” concerns sparked “their” “existential” lookups. (You can groan now.)

It begs the question of whether this much self-reflection is a good thing.

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.” — 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard

•••

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].