And the WOTY goes to…

They say language, like man, is an evolving thing, its metamorphoses and trends a reflection of human culture. What we are and where we focus changes by century, by year, and in these days of limitless e-platforms, even by moments.

One measure of that cultural evolution is vocabulary. So in 1990 Allen Metcalf, an English professor and executive secretary of the American Dialectical Society, had an idea. While planning their annual meeting he thought, wouldn’t it be fun to choose a word of the year, like Time Magazine’s Person of the Year?

That first group of 40 word nerds chose “bushlips” (a satirical political term), and tradition took root.

While it was the most organized, Metcalf’s idea wasn’t original. In 1945, a letter to Time Magazine suggested “atomic” should be declared word of the year. Germany’s language association has chosen a “wort des jahres” since 1971, and an “unwort” — a commonly misused one — since 1991.

Today in the U.S. the honor is bestowed by dictionaries, based on lookups and with one notable twist. Here’s 2022’s:

Merriam-Webster: Gaslighting

Starting with America’s most iconic dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s WOTY is gaslighting, “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” 2022 saw a 1,740% increase in gaslighting lookups.

“Gas Light” was the name of a 1938 thriller (worth watching), in which a manipulative man almost convinces his wife she’s going insane. His mysterious machinations make the house’s gas lights dim, but whenever she mentions it, he insists it’s her imagination, so she doubts herself and begins to lose her grip on reality.

The term has rather dim-inished from that initially elaborate kind of psychological manipulation and to simpler acts of deception today. Webster’s broader definition is “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for personal advantage.”

Why were Americans looking up gaslighting so much more this year? Perhaps it’s a good sign that in this say-anything new world we may be learning to check things out more before believing what we read or hear.

Cambridge: Homer

Baseball fans should like this one. “Homer” — slang for a home run — saw a huge spike in Cambridge Dictionary searches this year, with more than 65,000 searches on May 5 alone, when homer was the winning word on the popular online game Wordle (created by Joshua Wardle and published by the New York Times). Five-letter word lookups have become so much more common among its roughly 2 million-plus players that there’s a new phenomenon in lexicography called “the Wordle effect.”

Collins: Permacrisis

If you think it through, you know this word even if you didn’t know it. Whether it’s national politics, the world’s climate and inflation worries, wars, or just a string of personal bad luck, “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events" will sound too familiar. It leaves us feeling upset, insecure, and embattled.

Let’s hope next year’s word is “resolve.”

Oxford: Goblin mode

Here’s that alluded twist. 2022 marks the first year that Oxford has put its WOTY to a vote. After picking three highly-searched words — well, words and phrases, it asked users to choose among metaverse, #IStandWith, or goblin mode. After more than 300,000 users voted in a two-week period, the winner was announced Monday.

#IStandWith: This hashtag with literally millions of lookups “recognizes the activism and division that has characterized this year,” according to Oxford University Press. “From war in Ukraine, to the Depp v. Heard lawsuit, this 'word' coined on social media to align your views to a cause or person can often further foster dispute (and sometimes even hate speech) in its polarizing nature.”

Metaverse: The virtual world where people can practically work, shop, eat, make friends, and bleed time on-screen, in other words, where many modern folk live. In October 2022 alone metaverse lookups quadrupled compared with the same month last year, according to Oxford.

And the winner is…

Goblin mode: Yet another way of expressing rejection of societal expectations, this slang was first noticed on Twitter in 2009. Originally describing a self-indulgent, unapologetically lazy and defiant attitude, since reemerging from COVID and remote work “goblin mode” is also being used to reject the idea of returning back to normal, whatever that is.

According to an Oxford statement the word of the year reflects “the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past twelve months, one that has potential as a term of lasting cultural significance.” So what do this year’s WOTYs say about 2022?

As a group gaslighting, permacrisis, goblin mode, and homer make an interesting, if perhaps obvious statement evocative of Madeline Kahn’s famous song in the movie Blazing Saddles (“I’m tired… sick and tired”). This year American society seemed burned out (another search phrase experiencing record highs), weary of all crises whether real, created, or imagined. Perhaps that’s why Wordle reached a staggering 3 million daily players early this year — we needed the mental escape.

Games don’t often generate words of the year. Yet if Wordle’s drastic reduction since summer is anything to go by, we may be reemerging more hopefully, fewer goblins among us.

In that spirit, here’s a groaner for you:

Why was the cow fired from her job at the methane plant? She was gaslighting.

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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email sholeh@cdapress.com.