If it’s December, it’s time for the Words of the Year from the wordsmiths at Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and Dictionary.com. Every year logophiles eagerly await the selection, and the list is finally out. This year’s words each capture distinct parts of the culture and their impact on society and the year that was 2024.
For the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), widely considered the authority on the English language, the word of the year highlighted an effect many of us may have experienced during endless scrolling on our devices: brain rot.
As defined by the OED, brain rot is “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.” The first recorded use of “brain rot” was in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 transcendentalism masterpiece, Walden. In the book Thoreau laments society’s tendency to prefer simple ideas over complex ones that might have multiple interpretations, a symptom of decline in mental and intellectual effort. “While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
The editors at Merriam-Webster landed on “polarization” which captures the defining event in the United States for 2024, the quadrennial presidential election. Their dictionary defines polarization as “division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.” Based on search volume, the word choice “reflected the desire of Americans to better understand the complex state of affairs in our country and around the world.”
Finally, if you spent any time scrolling through social media videos this year, then you’ll be very familiar with the online lexicon Dictionary.com’s word of the year, demure. The word reflects the viral sensation of video remixes of content from TikTok influencer Jools Lebron who used the word along with “mindful” in a very catchy video series posted to the platform in August.
The word saw a 1,200 percent increase in digital web searches this year. From Dictionary.com, “Though the term demure has traditionally been used to describe those who are reserved, quiet, or modest, a new usage has spread through social media, one used to describe refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior in various contexts such as at work or on a plane. This increased focus on public appearance and behavior comes at a time when employees are increasingly returning to offices after hybrid remote work following the pandemic.”
In 2023, Oxford selected “rizz”, Merriam-Webster chose “authentic”, and Dictionary.com picked “hallucinate” for their words of the year.
