And The Winner Is . . . (Part 1)

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

If you read last week’s blog post, you know that The American Dialect Society’s  (ADS) Word of 2022 is  the suffix -ussy. However, the ADS has an entire ceremony with multiple categories for words of the year — kind of like the Academy Awards of words. Although -ussy is a little difficult to catch on to, some of the other words are a bit clearer. I have attended the ceremony on Zoom a couple of times in the past, and I had heard of most of the words. In 2021, of course, many of the words concerned the pandemic. This year, I did not attend, and some of the words are a little less familiar to me — most of the people deciding the winners are young. I guess I could compare it to not knowing many of the nominees at other award ceremonies either!

Note that words can be nominated in more than one category.

Other nominated words for Word of the Year (-ussy being the winner)

Dark Brandon: sinister, powerful alter ego of Joe Biden (play on “Let’s Go Brandon”) 
quiet quitting: doing no more than the minimum required for a job 
rizz: effortless attractiveness or style (short for “charisma”) 
Slava Ukraini: “Glory to Ukraine!” (said in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance) 
special military operation: Russian designation for invasion of Ukraine 

Most Useful Word/Most Likely to Succeed

quiet quitting: doing no more than the minimum required for a job 
climate criminal: celebrity who flies excessively via private jet 
longtermism: ethical position that prioritizes improving the long-term future 
nepo baby: celebrity who is the child of a celebrity 
rizz: effortless attractiveness or style (short for “charisma”) 

The winner? quiet quitting

Political Word of the Year

Dark Brandon: sinister, powerful alter ego of Joe Biden (play on “Let’s Go Brandon”) 
Dobbs: Supreme Court decision reversing abortion rights (as in “post-Dobbs”)
pink trickle/splash: result of Republican “red wave” in midterms not materializing 
Slava Ukraini: “Glory to Ukraine!” (said in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance) 
Woman, Life, Freedom: rallying cry for women’s rights in Iran and elsewhere

The winner? Dark Brandon

Digital Word of the Year

-dle: suffix for Wordle-like games (Heardle, Absurdle, Foodle, Worldle, Redactle, etc.)
BFFR: initialism for “be fucking for real” 
American Dialect Society 2022 Word of the Year Vote 
American Dialect Society: Words of the Year 
chief twit: self-designation of Elon Musk after acquiring Twitter 
chronically online: spending so much time online that it warps one’s sense of reality 
crypto rug pull: scam in which a fraudulent development team pumps a cryptocurrency
     token before disappearing with the funds, leaving investors with a valueless asset 
touch grass: go outside (antidote to spending too much time online)
-verse: online world, as in Metaverse (Facebook’s VR platform) or Fediverse (federated
   servers on Mastodon) 

The winner? Another suffix: -dle

 

Stay tuned for Part 2…