Words of the year point to the power, perils and ephemeral nature of digital life

Other 2024 words of the year also have social media to thank for their popularity.

- Roger J. Kreuz

Ever since the American Dialect Society selected a Word of the Year at its conference in 1990, more than half a dozen English dictionaries have anointed an annual word or phrase that's meant to encapsulate the zeitgeist of the prior year.

In 2003, the publisher of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary began bestowing a crown. On Dec 9, 2024, it selected "polarisation" as its word of the year, which joins a list of 2024 winners from other dictionaries that includes "brat", "manifest", "demure", "brain rot" and "enshittification".

The terms that are honoured are selected in a variety of ways. For example, in 2024, the editors of the Oxford dictionaries allowed the public to cast votes for their favourite from a short list of candidates. Brain rot emerged victorious.

Other publishers rely on the acumen of their editors, augmented by measures of popularity such as the number of online searches for a particular term.

Given the steep decline in the sale of printed reference works, these yearly announcements raise the visibility of the publisher's wares. But their choices also offer a window into the spirit of the times.

As a cognitive scientist who studies language and communication, I saw, in 2024's batch of winners, the myriad ways digital life is influencing English language and culture.

HITS AND MISSES This isn't the only year in which nearly all the winners fell under a single thematic umbrella. In 2020, epidemic-related terminology - Covid, lockdown, pandemic and quarantine - surged to the fore.