Collins Dictionary, American
Dialect Society and the News on the Web Corpus: Fake News
The clear
winner in the word-of-the-year follies was “fake news,” chosen by at least
three different organizations: the American Dialect Society, Collins
Dictionary, and the News on the Web Corpus.
The American Dialect Society
word is based on a live vote by people who attend the
Linguistic Society of America annual meeting, which I had hoped to attend this
year but didn’t because of travel problems. It looks like a lot of fun, and in
addition to “fake news” as the word of the year, attendees also chose
“broflake" as the most creative word of the year, blending “bro” like
“dude” with the last part of “snowflake,” and defined as “a man or boy who
lacks resilience or coping skills in the face of disagreements or setbacks.”
They also chose “#MeToo” as the hashtag of the year.
“Fake news”
also won in their “most likely to succeed” category. Previous “most likely to
succeed” winners included “marriage equality” and “to ghost” (meaning to
abruptly end a relationship by cutting off communication, especially online).
Collins is a British dictionary
and noted a 365% increase in the term “fake news” in 2017 over 2016. The Collins blog post talked
about the term emerging in 2016 when people noticed a large number of false
news stories about US presidential candidates and then about how the term
really took off in 2017 when it started being thrown around by politicians to
describe any story they didn’t like.
I was still
a journalism professor in 2016, teaching social media, and I remember being
really alarmed by all the fake news stories on Facebook, and then being just
dismayed when the term “fake news” became politicized in 2017 because it made
it so much harder to talk about the real problem. But people were using
the term noticeably more often in 2017.
The News on
the Web Corpus is run out of Brigham Young University by Mark Davies, and it
also chose “fake news” as the word of the year based on data, looking at words
that showed a big increase in use over the previous year and controlling for
how often a word is or has been used in general. They found that in their
corpus, “fake news” was used “more than five times as much in 2017 as it was in 2016,” so an even bigger increase
than Collins saw.
“Alternative
facts,” which won “euphemism of the year” in the American Dialect Society
voting, came in second in the News on the Web analysis.
A couple of
other interesting things emerged from the News on the Web corpus:
First,
although use of the name “Trump” only increased by about 50%, they found a big
increase in words derived from “Trump,” including “Trumpism,” “Trumpworld,”
“Trump-like,” “Trumpery,” and so on.
Second, they
found that “fidget spinner” had a spike in late May of 2017, but fizzled out,
which matches what I saw on store shelves. They seemed to be everywhere, but
only for a while.
Every other
2017 word-of-the-year winner also had a political sensibility.
This year,
every word of the year had a political meaning—some good and some bad.
"Fake news" was the clear winner, but there were some interesting
WOTY surprises too.
Merriam-Webster: Feminism
Merriam-Webster
chose “feminism,” noting that it saw a big increase in lookups for
the word throughout the year with big spikes related to specific news events
such as the Women’s March on Washington in January and the release of the Hulu
series “The Handmaids Tale.”
Dictionary.com: Complicit
Dictionary.com
chose “complicit,” saying it saw a 10,000% increase in
lookups after Saturday Night Live “aired their satirical
ad showing Ivanka Trump hawking a made-up perfume called Complicit,” and
an even bigger spike a few weeks later when Ivanka Trump gave an interview
saying she didn’t know what it meant to be complicit.
The Telegraph: Covfefe
The British
newspaper “The Telegraph” ran a poll for its word-of-the-year, and its readers chose
“covfefe” (C-O-V-F-E-F-E), which is actually not a real
word. It showed up in a tweet from Donald Trump in late May when, from context,
it appears he meant to type the word “coverage.” The tweet read “Despite the
constant negative press covfefe,” which caused a flurry of confusion, jokes,
and alarm. (Since the tweet also stopped mid-sentence, people wondered whether
something had actually happened to the president.)
Cambridge Dictionary: Populism
The British
Cambridge Dictionary, chose “populism” as its word of the year,
which could apply to British, American, and global politics. The dictionary
defines “populism” as “political ideas and activities that are intended to get
the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want,” and the
dictionary saw an overall increase in use, and spikes related to news events,
such as when Pope Francis said that populism can mean different things in
different parts of the world, but he worries that
populism gave rise to Hitler and that in times of crisis, people sometimes lack
good judgment. In other words, what they think they want might not
be the best thing for them.
Oxford Dictionaries: Youthquake
Oxford
Dictionaries, also a British dictionary, stuck to local politics with its
choice: “youthquake.”
This one had many
people in the US scratching their heads. I‘d
never heard the term, but according to Oxford, its editors saw a fivefold
increase in use from 2016 to 2017, largely related to the unexpectedly high
number of young voters who turned out in the UK’s general election. It was a
youthquake—like an earthquake, significant and unexpected.
Australian National Dictionary Center: Kwaussie
The Australian
National Dictionary Center also stuck to national politics with its choice:
“Kwaussie.” (I hope I’m saying that right: K-W-A-U-S-S-I-E.) Like “broflake”
and “youthquake,” “Kwaussie” is a blend,
mixing “Kiwi” and “Aussie” to describe “a person who is a dual citizen of
Australia and New Zealand.” It became a big deal this year when, according to ABC
News, “a dual citizenship crisis…prevented six senators,
one deputy prime minister, a senate president, and one MP from holding office.”
Haggard Hawks: Agathism
And to end on a
happy note, the Haggard Hawks website word of the year was
“agathism,” the belief that all things eventually get better, though the means
of getting there may not be easy.” It emerged as an English word in the early
1800s and comes from the Greek word “agathos,” which means “good” or “noble.”
Haggard Hawks is a website that covers obscure words, language facts, and
etymology. (http://www.quickanddirtytips.com)