With the old year about to end, it’s time again to review the new words that have made it into dictionaries and other lexicons over the past 12 months, starting with the “Word of the Year” as chosen by the Oxford University Press: “Brain rot.”
This denotes the numbing of a person’s intellect, and I guarantee it doesn’t apply to you if you recognize that this “word” of the year is actually two words.
That aside, the noted publishing house defines ”brain rot” as a condition brought on by viewing too much shoddy stuff online – especially on social media.
Merriam-Webster this year has added 200 entries to its collection, including – this having been an election year – the oft-uttered MAGA, now promoted from acronym to actual word.
The dictionary has also legitimized another acronym, IDGAF. This one is so indelicate that the company website, out of “politeness,” won’t even define it.
We will get to that later, coming as close as we dare to providing its meaning (many of us already know and probably invoke it often, which is exactly why it was selected ).
How do such mutterings become “official” words?
According to a Merriam-Webster editor, “The one constant of a vibrant living language is change. We continuously encounter new ways of describing the world around us, and the dictionary is a record of those changes.”
He says lexicographers monitor a wide range of sources in deciding which words to add on the basis of common usage, “from academic journals to social media.”
Merriam-Webster has cited some two-word entries of its own, including “touch grass.” And don’t jump to conclusions – this has nothing to do with what you do or don’t smoke. Its now-authorized meaning offers an antidote for “brain rot” – “to participate in normal activities in the real world, as opposed to online experiences.”
The Collins Dictionary weighs in with “looksmacking,” which it defines as attempting to maximize the attractiveness of one’s appearance, and “rawdogging” – “the act of undertaking an activity without preparation, support, or equipment.”
But let’s cut to the chase and get to the two best entries, one of which is the aforementioned IDGAF. While Merriam-Webster’s website is too genteel to define it, I’ll go far enough to explain that it stands for “I Don’t Give a .…”
The acronym has apparently become so common in the vernacular that it popped up in 2018 as the title of a song that won platinum awards in several countries, including the U.S.
The singer and writer Dua Lipa, brasher than editors of Merriam-Webster’s website (the dictionary itself is more explicit), bursts forth with the entire phrase when she performs the number.
Now it’s time to crown what in this space is considered the clear first-place winner. The venerable Macquarie Dictionary in Australia has chosen as its word of the year: “Enshittification.”
Coined in an essay a few years ago by author Cory Doctorow, the term as Macquarie defines it embodies the gradual degrading of a service or product as a result of profit-seeking.
The dictionary’s website explains,“The word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment.”
How true – and as we do our best to navigate the twists and turns of contemporary living, I guess we could say it even more succinctly:
Enshittification happens.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
