Recently updated
Words of the year, now with polarization.
Recently updated
Words of the year Now with demure and kakistocracy .
Words of the year Now with demure and kakistocracy.
Recently updated
Words of the year Now with brain rot .
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with enshittification.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with manifest.
Words of the year
From the Collins Dictionary, brat : inspired by Charli XCX and “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.”
MLK: diversity
MLK using the word in 1967, more than. year before the OED’s earliest citation.
Recently updated
Another word of the year.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with a second “hallucinate” and a “vibe of the year.”
Recently updated
Another word of the year.
Recently updated
A word of the year from Merriam-Webster.
Recently updated
More words of the year.
Words of the year
From the Collins Dictionary, AI .
Recently updated
“Woman”: another word of the year.
Words of the year
From the Collins Dictionary, permacrisis, “a term that describes ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity.’”
The ODAAE
Underway, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, Henry Louis Gates Jr., editor-in-chief.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with insurrection.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with one from The Economist.
Words of the year
“Vax” is first.
Performative again
Arts & Letters Daily recently linked to a short commentary on the word performative. The commentary is crotchety and overwrought, with talk of corruption and senseless violence and infestations of body lice. I’m not linking. It so happens that I wrote what seems to me a far clearer, more helpful, and less wrought commentary on performative back in March. That commentary I’ll link to.
Performative
In speech-act terms, a performative is a statement that does something. In current everyday use, performative describes a statement that pretends to do something, that is merely a performance, that substitutes for doing anything of substance.
Nail-biter and others
Peter Sokolowski of Merriam-Webster looks at words of the 2020 election.
Recently updated
“They,” another word of the year.
Recently updated
“Voice,” another word of the year.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with “cancel culture .”
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with “existential .”
Recently updated
Another word of the year: “upcycling.”
Warfighter on The Late Show
On The Late Show last night, Stephen Colbert commented on the appearance of the word warfighters in a presidential tweet.
The ubiquitous warfighter
To my ear, warfighter has something of the sound of a kenning. As spoken by our president, it sounds like a sanction for war crimes. A service member belongs to a community with norms and values; a warfighter is an independent agent. A warfighter: so anything goes.
Recently updated
Words of the year: now with climate emergency.