antisemitism vs. anti-Semitism

18 March 2025

The copyeditor in me noticed that the Donald Trump’s executive order of 29 January 2025 titled Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism uses the hyphenated and capitalized form of that word instead of now usually preferred forms antisemitism and antisemitic. The change in preferred spelling is both an example of a rapidly changing usage and of the sloppiness and inattention to detail, and perhaps even malicious intent, that is characteristic of the Trump administration.

Ten years ago, the form anti-Semitism was the overwhelmingly preferred spelling; the Corpus of Contemporary American English, with data up to the year 2012, records 3,108 hits for that spelling compared to only 618 for antisemitism. But the preferred spelling has rapidly changed over the past decade. The News on the Web (NOW) corpus records 3,062 hits for anti-Semitism in the year 2024, compared to 18,777 for antisemitism. The ratio of 5: or 6:1 remains steady, only it has flipped in favor of the antisemitism spelling.

This shift can also be seen by comparing the U.S. Department of State’s current statement on Defining Antisemitism with its statement on Defining Anti-Semitism issued in 2010. (The State Department’s website does not give a date for the current statement, but the department’s shift in spelling seems to have occurred during the Biden administration.)

As to the origin of the term, the French adjective antisémitique, in the sense of prejudice toward Jews, appears by 1868, and the German noun Antisemitismus was in use by 1876, popularized, if not coined, by journalist and antisemite Wilhelm Marr. Both adjective and noun, in hyphenated form, had entered widespread English usage by 1879.

The shift in spelling, dropping the hyphen and capital letter, began in earnest in April 2015 when the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) announced a preference for the antisemitism spelling, claiming that hyphen and capitalization of Semitism “not only legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification that was thoroughly discredited by association with Nazi ideology, but also divides the term, stripping it from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) followed suit in 2021, as did other organizations and editors.

But dictionaries have yet to catch up with this shift in spelling. Dictionaries tend to be slow, both because their editorial bandwidth is limited and because they generally want to focus on lasting usages and not respond to every shift in fashion. Although given the sensitive nature of the term, perhaps by this point they should move antisemitism up on the list priorities to edit. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), from 2019, only makes mention of the antisemitism spelling in its listing of forms of the word; all its usage citations are of anti-Semitism. Merriam-Webster’s only mention of the antisemitism spelling is a note saying it is used “less commonly.” And the 2022 fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary makes no mention of antisemitism spelling at all.

The Chicago Manual of Style is more up to date. For some time, that style guide’s preference has been for a “spare hyphenation style” that as a general rule does not use hyphens between prefixes and roots; this general rule is unchanged from at least the 2003 fifteenth edition. (I did not look further back.) However, the 2024 18th edition of CMOS’s Hyphenation Guide includes antisemitism as an example of this spare hyphenation style, where previous editions did not give this specific example.

As to why the Trump administration deployed the anti-Semitism spelling, the Times of Israel (14 March 2025) reports that the Trump administration has not responded to inquiries about the spelling. One might think it is a knee-jerk reaction to the “liberal Biden administration’s” use of antisemitism, but conservative media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart also use that spelling, as does virtually all of the Israeli press. It is possible the Trump White House simply consulted dictionaries as to the correct spelling. But while this might be a legitimate excuse for an ordinary writer, one would hope that when crafting a policy on antisemitism the White House would be consulting experts and be aware of the shift in spelling. About the only explanations that makes sense are that it is yet another example of sloppy and poorly worded and executed policies that are coming out of the current White House or that they actually prefer the anti-Semitism spelling.

Does the spelling matter? On one level, it doesn’t. Spelling isn’t going to alter anyone’s views toward Jews. If the anti-Semitism spelling contributes toward hatred of Jews, that contribution is marginal at best. But on another level, it does matter. When one sees someone use the anti-Semitism spelling in 2025, one can rightly conclude that, at best, they are unaware of the difference. And when one sees the White House using it, one can only conclude that they aren’t serious about combatting antisemitism or, worse, that they are antisemitic themselves.

Discuss this post

Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. anti-Semitism, n., anti-Semite, n. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Spelling of antisemitism vs. anti-Semitism, n.d. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, 2024, 7.96: Hyphenation Guide, 17th edition, 2017, 7.89: Hyphenation Guide, and 15th edition, 2003, 7.90: Hyphenation Guide (Archive.org). Accessed 18 March 2025.

Davies, Mark. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Accessed 18 March 2025.

———. News on the Web Corpus (NOW). Accessed 18 March 2025

Elia-Shalev, Asaf. “Breaking with Consensus, Trump Makes ‘anti-Semitism’ Hyphenated Again.” Times of Israel, 14 March 2025. Accessed 18 March 2025.

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Spelling of antisemitism, April 2015. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Lebovic, Matt. “What’s in a Hyphen? Why Writing anti-Semitism with a Dash Distorts Its Meaning.” Times of Israel, 23 August 2018. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Merriam-Webster.com, anti-Semitism, n., and anti-Semitic, adj. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2019, s.v. anti-Semitism, n., anti-Semitic, adj. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Trump, Donald J. Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism. The White House, 29 January 2025. Accessed 18 March 2025.

U.S. Department of State. Defining Anti-Semitism, 8 June 2010. Accessed 18 March 2025.

———. Defining Antisemitism, n.d. Accessed 18 March 2025.

ADS 2024 Word of the Year (WOTY)

A woman and two men at the front of a conference center meeting room

Chairs of the 2024 ADS WOTY nominating session, l to r, Kelly Elizabeth Wright, Charles Carson, and Ben Zimmer

The American Dialect Society has selected rawdog as its 2024 Word of the Year (WOTY 2024). Rawdog is an excellent choice for a number of reasons. The word dates to at least 2002—to be considered, words need only to be newly prominent, not newly coined, in the year in question—with an original sense of to have unprotected sex. In recent years, rawdog has semantically broadened, coming to mean to engage in any activity recklessly or without protection, such as braving Covid without a mask or vaccine or cooking an unfamiliar meal without a recipe. One can rawdog a long aircraft flight by boarding without reading material or a movie. In fact, there is even a game where users compete as to who can rawdog the longest on a flight that uses an app on the player’s phone to measure eye movement, penalizing them if they don’t stare straight ahead.

Many organizations and individuals (including me) promote a word or words or the year, but the ADS is the oldest, having done so for some thirty-five years. The ADS is a 135-year-old professional organization made up of linguists, lexicographers, and others that studies the languages of North America. It has published the journal American Speech for the last hundred years.

Each year in early January, the organization meets, in recent years in conjunction with the larger Linguistic Society of America. The primary purpose of the meeting is an academic conference where members present papers and further the scholarly aims of the society. In contrast, the WOTY selection is a fun diversion and an opportunity to raise public awareness about language change. In short, while the selection itself is unserious (a word that itself was one of this year’s nominees), the process can be enlightening.

I’ve been following and writing about the ADS WOTY for over two decades, and on occasion I’ve participated in the proceedings, as I did this year. (I usually show up if I’m also giving a paper at the conference, as I did this year.) You can read ADS press release which provides the list of winners, nominees, and vote count by clicking this link. But here I’m going to discuss my impressions of the process and the selections.

The selection occurs in two steps. The first is a nominating session, held the day before the final selection where nominations for words in the subcategories are made. Some subcategories, like Most Useful and Political Word of the Year are perennial, and ad hoc subcategories can be proposed if appropriate for that particular year. I proposed a category that seemed fitting for several of the words this year, Most Fun While It Lasted, although someone else came up with that most apropos wording for the title. In my opinion, this is the more fun and interesting session. It’s smaller (there were about fifty people there), and as a result the discussion is livelier, more in depth, and a bit more scholarly inclined (but still fun and unserious; to give a sense of the tone, co-chair Kelly Elizabeth Wright was dubbed the nominatrix). More importantly, terms used by more marginal and underrepresented groups are more likely to be raised and discussed in depth in this session.

The final selection is made the next night. That session is much larger; some 350 were in attendance this year. Nominees in the subcategories are voted on, and nominees are made for the WOTY itself and then voted upon. If no nominee gets fifty percent of the vote on the first ballot, a runoff between the top two vote-getters is held. Because the crowd is much larger and there are time constraints (another unrelated conference session uses the big room immediately after), the discussion is more constrained. It’s still fun, though. There is a tradition of running satirical commentary in the visual presentation of the nominees, this year by Jessica Grieser, filling in for Grant Barrett who usually provides the snark. (As an example, when co-chair Ben Zimmer’s son stood up to comment on the combining form -maxxing, Jessica typed Zimmermaxxing into the display.)

Now on to what I think of the nominees and final selections.

For the big one, the overall WOTY, rawdog won in a runoff against sanewashing. Despite requiring a runoff, the choice was not that close. Rawdog nearly got fifty percent on the first ballot, with the other nominees splitting the rest of the vote. I think it is an excellent choice. It is newly prominent, encapsulates a trending social phenomenon, and is linguistically interesting.

Lock in took top honors in the Most Useful category, another excellent choice. To lock in is to achieve a state of deep focus and concentration, and one can see it being used for many years hence. Other nominees included cooked, to be exhausted or in serious trouble. While it is currently in newly prominent slang use, this sense has been in common and continuous use since the mid nineteenth century, calling into question its qualification. Crash out is a noun and verb referring to having reached one’s limit or as a result reacting in an irrational or overly emotional manner. Both cooked and crash out were also nominated for the overall WOTY. The final nominee in this category is eat, in the sense of accomplishing something extremely well, with a superlative of devour, and a past tense of 4+4 (ate), displaying linguistic inventiveness. The nominees were all good, but I agree that lock in best fits the spirit of the category.

Unserious won the Most Likely to Succeed category. While the word dates to the seventeenth century, its use as a putdown is relatively new. It is a reasonable choice, but I don’t think it was the best. That was NIL, a legal initialism arising out the court cases requiring the NCAA to compensate college athletes for use of their name, image, or likeness. Not only is the term new, but it will undoubtedly be used in legal discourse for ages to come. The other nominees were less appropriate for the category. Aura, a charismatic presence, is an already well-established word that has recently gained increased currency in youth slang. Girlypop, a fun, trusted, and distinctly feminine female friend (also an adjective describing one) was a new one to me, and while it may last, its chances are distinctly less than either NIL or unserious. Finally, there was tariffied, that is being afraid or worried over the economic consequences of Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods. While it is a clever coinage, there is no way it will outlast the incoming administration (and probably not even that long), making it distinctly inappropriate for this category.

ADS’s Political WOTY is Luigi, a reference to Luigi Mangione, who in December assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. While it is a productive root, acting as noun and verb and in numerous compounds, it suffers from the end-of-year bias that is present in most WOTY discussions. I was pulling for broligarchy , which I thought had more staying power throughout the year and has a better chance of remaining in use. Sanewashing and weird were also nominees that were deserving of winning. Sanewashing was also a nominee for overall WOTY. Honorable mention goes to bleach blonde bad built butch body, a retort delivered by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) in a House of Representatives committee meeting after Greene insulted her appearance. While the exact term is very much of a particular moment, it is representative of a type of insult discourse that is common among Black women, a group that is often left out of WOTY consideration. Burrito taxi, a mocking of complaints about inflation of grocery prices by people who order meal delivery to their homes, and lib out, the unrealistic hopes of Democratic victory in the year’s elections, were also nominated.

Brainrot, mental deterioration from consuming too much social media or that media itself, took honors for Digital WOTY. It’s a good choice, but I preferred AI slop (or just slop) referring to computer-generated content, especially the flood of such content that fills Google search results. It’s new this year, and we’re going to be contending with AI slop for many years to come. Xit/Xodus was another reasonable choice, referring to users abandoning Twitter/X en masse, but that’s another term of the moment that will not have longevity. Cope, a nouning of the verb coined in response to the prospects of the deteriorating of American politics as nominated, as was tradwife, a social media phenomenon, and an ironic one at that as being a social media influencer is hardly traditional.

The Informal WOTY was rawdog, winning handily, although there was a strong showing by yap, referring to excessive or overly enthusiastic speech, used both negatively and positively. While the negative use is hardly newly prominent, the positive use is, and in 2024 it was very common among youth, making it a reasonable nominee. Yap was also a nominee for overall WOTY. Cooked was also a nominee. The other three, mewing, mog, and W, were all new to me and deservedly trailed in the voting.

Most Creative honors deservedly went to the snowclone the X I Xed, where one invents an irregular past tense of a regular verb, as in the gasp I gusped or the scream I scrempt. The combining form -maxxing took a distant second. I have a certain fondness for the nominee in da clerb, we all fam, a quotation from the television sitcom Broad City, which became a TikTok trend in 2024. I like it, but it’s not as apt a choice as the X I Xed. And broligarchy was also in the mix but didn’t get much traction in this category’s votes.

Finally there was the ad hoc category of Most Fun While It Lasted, which I proposed mainly because of brat, which took the category handily. Demure, a new sense referring to modest and reserved appearance, hawk tuah, an echoic term for spitting, especially before performing oral sex, that was inspired by a viral video, and hold space, the nonjudgmental creation of a safe space were nominees that didn’t stand a chance against brat, which was also a nominee for overall WOTY.

That was this year’s crop of WOTY winners and nominees. Overall, it was a pretty good grouping of terms of significance in the past year. Of course one can disagree with any of the choices or my opinions about them; there’s nothing scientific or academically rigorous about the process. But it is an entertaining exercise that makes one think about the events of the past year and the language we used to refer to them.

Photo credit: Dave Wilton, 2025. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Shoddy Scholarship by Those Who Should Know Better

Vincent of Beauvais writing a manuscript, c.1478, London, British Library, Royal MS 14 E.i, vol. 1, fol. 3r

27 May 2024

[Correction added 28 May 2024]

Last week the website Medievalists.net published a listicle titled, 12 Expressions that We Got from the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, only four of the twelve are actually medieval phrases, and two others, while modern formulations, come from metaphors that are rooted in medieval thought. The other six either predate the medieval period or are thoroughly modern in origin. Given that it’s ridiculously easy to check such things with the Oxford English Dictionary Online, 50% is a failing grade. I expect this quality of research in a newspaper style section puff piece, not from a website by actual medievalists.

The website pulled the phrases from Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s 1996 Medieval Wordbook. I’m not familiar with the book, and I don’t know if the chosen phrases are representative of the scholarship of that book, or if the website’s editors were just spectacularly unlucky in their choices.

Scholars need to do better when writing popular pieces. Writing for the masses should not entail a reduction in scholarly rigor.

The twelve phrases are:

crocodile tears

Claim: The phrase meaning feigned sadness, comes from a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears while eating their victims.

Accuracy: Not particularly medieval. While the myth was widely known in medieval Europe, it dates to antiquity; Plutarch says the belief was widespread in the first century CE. And according to the OED, the phrase itself dates to the early modern period.

bring home the bacon

Claim: The phrase, meaning to earn a living, dates to an event in 1104 when a nobleman and his wife asked a prior for a blessing after not having argued for a year. The prior gave them a side of bacon as a reward, and afterward the nobleman donated land to the monastery on the condition that other couples were similarly rewarded.

Accuracy: False. Insufficient details are supplied to enable checking to see if anything like this ever happened, but the phrase has absolutely nothing to do with anything medieval. According to the OED, its first recorded use was in 1906 by African-American boxer Joe Gans who had just won a title bout in Nevada.

Correction: the story about the prior awarding the side of bacon in 1104 is true (at least as true as any historical event from that era is). It’s mentioned in both Langland’s Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. (My expertise on Piers is a bit sketchy, but I should have recalled the Chaucer reference.) But the present-day phrase still has nothing to do with this event.

hocus pocus

Claim: The phrase, part of a supposed magical incantation, is a variation on the words of the Latin mass, “hoc est enim corpus domini” (this is the body of our Lord).

Accuracy: Probably false and definitely not medieval. The phrase dates to the seventeenth century, with the first known use in Ben Jonson’s 1621 Masque of Augures. There was also a stage magician from that period who went by the name Hocus Pocus. The idea that it is a variation on the Latin mass is possible, but linguistically unlikely as it doesn’t explain how the “enim” was omitted. This supposed origin is first surfaced in an anti-Catholic tract in 1684 that compared transubstantiation to an illusionist’s trick. See the entry on Wordorigins.org.

lick into shape

Claim: Medieval bestiaries claimed that bear cubs were born as shapeless lumps of flesh which the mother would shape them into bear-form with her tongue.

Accuracy: Correct as far as it goes, but false in its implication. The statement regarding medieval bestiaries is correct, but the myth dates to second-century Rome, and the phrase doesn’t appear until the seventeenth century.

on the carpet

Claim: The phrase, meaning to reprimand someone, is a calque of the French “sur le tapis.” It comes from a medieval practice of putting a carpet on a banquet table, which would frequently be the topic of conversation.

Accuracy: Partially true, but not medieval. The phrase is indeed a calque of the French, although in this case it is better translated as “on the tablecloth,” where tablecloth is a metonym for the table and therefore the agenda of a meeting. It dates to the eighteenth century. In later American usage the meaning specialized from any agenda item to one of disciplining someone.

buckle down

Claim: The phrase, meaning to set to work, comes from medieval knights fastening their armor before battle.

Accuracy: Right metaphor, wrong period. The underlying metaphor and various uses of the word buckle do indeed refer to knights in armor, but the sense of the phrase as we use it today is an eighteenth-century Americanism.

out-Herod Herod

Claim: The phrase, meaning to exhibit extreme cruelty, while made famous by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, comes from medieval mystery plays where Herod was portrayed as the bad guy.

Accuracy: Partially true. The metaphor is indeed from the depiction of Herod in medieval dramas, although as far as I know, Shakespeare was the first to use the phrase as such. The piece on Medivalists.net doesn’t cite any specific medieval plays in which it appears.

a long spoon

Claim: The phrase meaning to keep a safe distance from danger is medieval.

Accuracy: True. Chaucer’s The Squire’s Tale has this line: “‘Therefore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon / That shal ete with a feend,’ thus herde I seye.” (Therefore it behooves them to have a very long spoon / who would eat with a fiend, thus I have heard said.)

goose is cooked

Claim: The phrase meaning someone is in trouble has two medieval origins. The first is that it refers to the church reformer Jan Hus who was burned at the stake in 1415. The second is that it refers to Eric XIV of Sweden in reference to a town he sacked and burned after they townspeople had mocked him by hanging a goose from the town wall.

Accuracy: False. The fact that two different origins tells us that at least one is wrong. Both are. The phrase dates to nineteenth-century England.

crow’s feet

Claim: The phrase referring to lines or wrinkles around one’s eyes comes from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

Accuracy: True.

food for worms

Claim: The phrase referring to a person’s death is medieval in origin.

Accuracy: True. The Medievalists.net piece cites the thirteenth century Ancrene Wisse; the phrase is even older, also found in the Old English poem Body and Soul.