I don't normally pay attention to the Word of the Year, regardless of the source. When I heard Oxford Dictionary's word of the year was an emoji, I was perplexed. Merriam-Webster's went with 'ism', which I always considered a suffix almost as ubiquitous as the scientific 'omes'. Think genome, proteosome, anything-osme.
On Friday, NPR did a commentary about another word of the year. The American Dialect Society selected the use of 'they' singular as a gender neutral pronoun. Now that is a word of the year I can get behind.
Who hasn't substituted 'they' instead of the cumbersome he or she?
In an era where gender can be fluid to non-existant, it's about time we had a gender neutral pronoun.
Published on January 16, 2016 09:51