What’s Your Word of the Year?
UPDATE: The Oxford Dictionaries’ 2014 word of the yearis vape, a verb meaning ‘to inhale and exhale the vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device.’ It’s true that we’ve seen lots more people smoking e-cigarettes recently, indoors and out. No word yet on whether the passage of marijuana legalization in numerous states this year had anything to do with it.
Among the entries submitted to Studio 360, we prefer bae, a popular term of endearment, suggested by Twitter user @LucyPwnage. It’s a much friendlier word than vape — would Pharrell sing “Come get it, vape”? We think not.
Every year, dictionaries like Merriam Webster and Oxford announce their words of the year — either newly minted terms or ones that rose to prominence in the previous year. TheOxford Dictionary will reveal their pick on Monday night. Sometimes the words become indispensable parts of our common lexicon, like cherished friends we’re happy to have around. Other years, the chosen words feel more like overplayed songs we’d be just as happy never hearing again. It can go either way.
What’s your pick for Word of the Year 2014? Tell us in a comment below, or on Twitter with the hashtag #WordoftheYear.
The American Dialect Society picked “not!” (with exclamation point) as its word of the year in 1992 — surely already overused by then, although 20-odd years later it’s begun to look cute through the haze of 90s nostalgia. More recently, “hashtag,” their 2012 pick, has lapsed into disrepute through overuse on Twitter — hashtags are, increasingly, a form of self-aware irony. And some of the annual words inevitably fell on hard times, never living up to their early promise. Remember “hypermiling,” Oxford Dictionaries’ 2008 pick? Me neither.
But some words of the year have stuck with us. Way back in 2005, Oxford Dictionaries picked “podcast,” a word very close to our hearts. Merriam-Webster tapped “blog” in 2004 — and, if not for blogs, how would you be reading this very blog post? Oxford’s 2013 choice, “selfie,” doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, although its eponymous TV show hasn’t lasted.
So, given the experts’ checkered record, we thought we might be able to come up with something better. Given 2014’s slurry of key words — words like “quarantine,” “polar vortex,” “bae” — what would you pick as The One? See if you can surprise us with something more clever, and less groan-worthy,than the official choices. We’ll announce our winning word on Monday just ahead of Oxford’s, and see how we measure up.
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