The Words of 2021

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and it's that time of year for top 10 lists, of course, but also word of the year time. Not surprisingly two of the three choices so far are pandemic related from the big dictionaries. Merriam-Webster picked "vaccine" while Oxford picked "vax". Is that a noun versus verb thing? But dictionary.com went a whole different way their word is "Allyship." To find out more about some of the keywords of this year and what goes into these selections, we're joined by Ben Zimmer, who happens to have a lot of words in his title.

He's a linguist, a lexicographer, the language columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, co-host of The Slate podcast, Spectacular Vernacular, and chair of the American Dialect Society, the ADS. Their new words committee that is, he's chair of that committee and oversees their word of the year selection process. Welcome back to the show, Ben Zimmer. Happy New Year.

Ben Zimmer: Hi, Happy New Year, Brian

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you can tweet @BrianLehrer or call up now to tell us your pick for word of the year, or maybe the word that you're thoroughly sick of from 2021. There's news on that front, which we'll try to get to too. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Ben, we'll ask more about your selection process at the American Dialect Society, but let's start with vaccine versus vax, the Merriam-Webster, and Oxford choices. In some ways, they're the same word, but as a linguist and lexicographer, how significant is the difference between them?

Ben Zimmer: It was interesting to see that those two major dictionary publishers chose roughly similar words, not exactly the same. The way that Merriam-Webster decides its word it's looking primarily at the look-up data. What words are people looking up the most and what has been seen as spike in interest over the past year? Merriam-Webster saw a big uptake with vaccine and shows that as their word of the year.

For Oxford, they used a different choice. They still take a data-driven approach, but they're actually looking at a big corpus of text. They're able to monitor the way that people are using language based on gathering up millions of words of text that people are using online. They saw that vax, V-A-X, that shortened form of vaccinate or vaccination, saw this enormous increase. Of course, vaxed can be used in all sorts of different ways too.

We talk about getting vaxed. We talk about anti-vaxers, although it's interesting when it's in those longer forms, sometimes we see it spelled with an extra X, V-A-X-X when we spell it that way. There's a lot of interesting linguistic development on that front, really about the whole language of vaccines as that has preoccupied so much of our discourse this past year.

Brian Lehrer: There was the phrase, "hot vax summer," which didn't quite materialize in the way people had hoped with the rise of the Delta variant, but the term stuck around, or at least the word vax in the middle of that stuck around. Sometimes in the past tense with two Xs, vaxxed. Why use four syllables vaccinated when one will do? Vaxxed.

Ben Zimmer: Absolutely. It is a shorthand. It's interesting, actually, it's a shorthand that's been around for quite a while. We think of it as particular to 2021, but if you look all the way back in 1812, Edward Jenner, who was the father of vaccination, he himself wrote to a friend to complain that, "The anti-vacks are assailing me." He spelled that anti-vacks, V-A-C-K-S to talk about people way back in 1812, who opposed vaccination.

Brian Lehrer: The third word of the year that I mentioned from dictionary.com, "allyship" which refers to being an ally in the racial justice movement. From a language standpoint, are you surprised it wasn't just ally as opposed to allyship?

Ben Zimmer: Well, I think that when you used it in that term allyship, the state of being an ally, perhaps it allows you to think about it more conceptually, not just, "What is an ally?" But what does it mean to be an ally? How can people be allies in this way? I think that that particular form and the fact that people were looking it up, again, this was based on what dictionary.com was seeing in their look-up data, shows that people were thinking about this in more conceptual terms, and really trying to understand with social justice movements and so forth, what it really means to be an ally for those movements.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear some words of the year, according to our listeners. Here's Martha in Highland Park. Hi, Martha you're on WNYC.

Martha: Good morning, Brian. My word is, "Insurrection."

Brian Lehrer: For good reason. We have a few people calling in to say, insurrection. Are you surprised that that wasn't anybody's word of the year yet?

Ben Zimmer: Well, yes. I've certainly seen it suggested by many people. In fact, I believe it was a runner-up for Merriam-Webster even though they went with vaccine. Absolutely. Since the January 6th Capital attack, at the time, people were actually trying to decide, "What should this be called? Is it a coup? Do we call it sedition?" Insurrection is the word that became the most common label, and the dictionary companies saw huge spikes in lookups for that word, insurrection as peoples again, tried to come to grips with this and, of course, it's something people are still trying to come to grips with nearly a year later.

Brian Lehrer: TJ in Brooklyn has a word of the year. Hi TJ.

TJ: Hi Brian. My word of the year is Ugh, U-G-H from politics, to media, to the pandemic. Ugh.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, and boy, I use that and I see it used more and more often in tweets and emails and stuff this year with all those things he listed that are going on.

Ben Zimmer: That is certainly if feeling this shared by many.

Brian Lehrer: If there was a-- What would that be called an exclamation? I imagine if somebody did a content analysis of exclamations that were included this year, maybe we would see that there was a surge in the use of Ugh. U-G-H.

Ben Zimmer: That would be really interesting to see. Exclamations and interjections and people, of course, can make up new ones, but an old standby like Ugh might really fit the bill. I'm sure that a lot of people's exclamations over the past year have been more profane in nature though.

Brian Lehrer: One or two. You are overseeing the selection process I see for the American Dialect Society word of the year, which you don't finalize until January 7th and you solicit nominations. Can our listeners call right up and nominate a word for word of the year that the American Dialect Society will consider?

Ben Zimmer: Absolutely. We are still fielding nominations, and you can find out information about that on the website, americandialect.org. Nominations can be sent by email to woty@americandialect.org, or you can also tweet at us @Americandialect on Twitter. The American Dialect Society has been selecting a word of the year since 1990. It's the granddaddy of all of these word of the year selections before the dictionary programs got in on the action. It's the oldest and we think the most prestigious choice.

We do wait a little longer because we have it at our annual meeting, which happens at the beginning of January. We will be making our final selection on Friday, January 7th. Yes, we definitely welcome nominations from the public, which will help us make our choice, because we not only pick word of the year, but also have lots of interesting other categories as well that we're looking for like political word of the year, and so forth. We like to have lots of nominations from people just to see what's on people's minds.

Brian Lehrer: I see the written qualifications, which I'll pass along to our listeners for word of the year nominees. Include words that show widespread usage by a large number of people in a variety of contexts and situations and which reflect important events, people, places, ideas, or preoccupations of English speakers in North America in 2021. Yes, I guess it's Ugh. 212-433 WNYC for anybody else who has a word of the year nomination for our guest Ben Zimmer. 212-433-9692. I think Betsy has one. Hi Betsy, you're on WNYC.

Betsy: Hey, Brian. Our word of the year definitely christened by my mom is "Recalibrating" sometimes by the hour [chuckles] or the minute, or the week, but definitely a lot of recalibrating.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Recalibrating, which yes, by the hour, by a minute, by the week. Jim in Millburn has a least favorite word. Hi, Jim, you're on WNYC.

Jim: Well, Brian, my least favorite word is "canceled". It seems to me every time I hear it, it means criticized. You're criticizing me and it's thrown out, as you're canceling me. You're trying to wipe me off the face of the earth. Now we're just asking for you to send your ideas and apparently people don't want to do that. They just want to say, "Hey, you're canceling me. Leave me alone. I'm allowed to say this [unintelligible 00:10:29]. That's my least favorite word.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you very much. In the categories, Ben, that you mentioned, since you're soliciting words in different categories, are you getting a lot of pandemic words? I saw that one episode of your podcast was about Omicron or is it Omicron because part of it was about how to pronounce it? I've been struck by how major media organizations are not consistent on that. Some are saying Omicron some are saying Omicron. What's your take at the American Dialect Society? Maybe you have the definitive, and tell us what some other SARS-CoV-2 adjacent words might be?

Ben Zimmer: In 2020, we had a special pandemic-related category. COVID was the overall winner in 2020. Not surprisingly, although social distancing won in that specific pandemic category, and I expect we're going to be doing the same thing this year. We'll need a special category for all of the COVID terms that people are using. You mentioned Omicron/Omicron. I am not going to say that there is one correct way to pronounce that. I personally tend to say Omicron. People say Omicron. Both are absolutely fine and acceptable.

It is interesting to see how, as we learn the Greek alphabet through the naming convention of the World Health Organization, none of us really, unless we were really versed in Greek had much need to talk about that Greek letter Omicron so we're all learning how to pronounce it. Another interesting thing though is just to see how a word like booster or boost is getting used in new ways, even though these are not new words. Now you very often hear people say I just got boosted, meaning they just received the COVID booster shot. Some people also tried to make booster into a verb but we've seen that boost has been the most popular verb that gets used in this new way, specifically with people getting those booster shots.

Brian Lehrer: Christine in Williamsburg, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christine.

Christine: Hi, Brian, love the show, calling in with a little bit of a slang word I guess, Cheugy. The reason why I'm calling in with it is because I'm at an age where a lot of my friends have teenagers, and they're using the word Cheugy, and there's been a lot of discussion on all of us old trying to understand what the word means.

Brian Lehrer: You know that one, Ben?

Ben Zimmer: Oh, I sure do. Yes. That one got a lot of attention in 2021, especially after a New York Times article appeared back in April, talking about that word. When it appears in The New York Times, that usually means that the slang has already become [unintelligible 00:13:13]. That particular word spelled C-H-E-U-G-Y is a word that's been wielded by people in Generation Z against millennials, people who are a bit older than them, to describe their fashion and lifestyles that according to those young people are a bit, let's say, out of touch out of style, a bit basic. That word Cheugy or CHOOG-ee as it's been pronounced saw a lot of attention, and it's a fun word. It's one of those things that I don't necessarily think it's going to last very long. We'll find a place in our lexicon necessarily, but it was certainly a word of 2021. That's for sure.

Brian Lehrer: Christine, thank you very much. Here's another least favorite word. Dave in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dave.

Dave: Oh, hey. Algorithm. That's the word.

Brian Lehrer: A least favorite word because of what algorithms are doing to you?

Dave: Yes, because that's all you hear in context with everything that's online and everything, the gig economy and the algorithms that are making people get fired from something I heard earlier on NYC during the week and just algorithm. That's like the big word for everything that gets sold to you online.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Patty in Brooklyn, you have two words of the year nominees, huh?

Patty: Yes, I do. The first one is nefarious. It is applied too much when the word bad or terrible or some other word we had used. Now nefarious is the word to condemn something. The other word is curated. There's a place in my neighborhood, a little grocery store that advertises curated groceries. People are curating their activities. People are curating everything. It's overused and I'm sick of it. It used to be in the art world.

Brian Lehrer: Curating our groceries. We have 30 seconds left, Ben. Last thought. You included some words from the world of TikTok and memes. Maybe cheugy one of those from the previous caller, but also bones day and no bones day. Can you give us a 15-second definition?

Ben Zimmer: That's one of my favorites. There's a guy named Jonathan Graziano who was posting videos of his dog, Noodle on TikTok. Very popular videos where he lifts the dog up and sees how Noodle is doing in the morning. If Noodle just goes limp and doesn't want to get out of bed, it's going to be a no bones day. People have taken that in the more general way like well, it looks like it's going to be a no bones day.

Brian Lehrer: You can find Ben Zimmer's work in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and the Slate podcast, Spectacular Vernacular, and look for his American dialect society's word of the year to be announced January 7th. Happy New Year, Ben. Thanks for this.

Ben Zimmer: Thanks. It's been a pleasure.

 

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