ADS Word of the Year: fake news

7 January 2018

On 5 January, the American Dialect Society chose fake news as its 2017 Word of the Year. The ADS defined fake news as either “disinformation or falsehoods presented as real news” or “actual news that is claimed to be untrue.” The phrase was considered during the organization’s deliberations for the 2016 Word of the Year (WOTY), but in that year it was being used only in the first of these two senses. Donald Trump began using it in the second sense in 2017, and it is this sense that catapulted it into the top spot. As far as I know, this is the first time a word has been considered in multiple years. (The ADS uses an expansive definition of word, that of “vocabulary item,” which includes phrases, hashtags, and the like.)

This is the twenty-eighth year the ADS has selected a WOTY, making it the most venerable of the organizations that do so. The organization comprises linguists, lexicographers, and those who study and write about language professionally. While the aims of the organization are scholarly, the WOTY selection is not a scholarly exercise, but rather one performed for fun and to educate the public about how language change is a normal, ongoing process.

While the single WOTY is noteworthy, perhaps more compelling are the words that were considered for the various categories the ADS votes on. The selections and the vote tallies are as follows:

Word of the Year

  • fake news, 196

  • #MeToo, indication by women that they have experienced sexual harassment or assault, 35

  • take a knee, to kneel in protest, especially during a time when others are standing, 30

  • alternative facts, contrary information that matches one’s preferred narrative or interpretation of events (this is the definition given by the ADS; I would define it as euphemism for lies, 12

  • persisterhood, persister, blend of persist and sister(hood), an expression of solidarity for women who persist in the face of sexism and gender bias, 6

  • milkshake duck, person or thing that is deeply loved until problematic behavior is revealed or unearthed, 5

  • whomst, humorous variant of “whom” used as a sarcastic display of intelligence, 3

  • pussyhat, pink knitted hat worn by demonstrators at the Women’s March, 2

Political WOTY

  • take a knee, 181

  • persister, persisterhood, 62

  • antifa, anti-fascist movements and organizations, treated as a whole, 16

Digital WOTY

  • shitpost, an online posting of worthless or irrelevant online content intended to derail a conversation or to provoke others, 78

  • rogue adj., describing someone ostensibly working in an administration who is posting messages against it, 34

  • ratio, on Twitter, amount of replies to a tweet compared to the number of retweets and likes, 25

  • get the zucc, be banned from Facebook (from the name of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), 24

  • initial coin offering, capital-raising process to collect funds to start up a new cryptocurrency, 21

  • emergency podcast, an audio show prepared at a moment of dire political need, 20

  • digital blackface, when a (usually white) person uses images of black people as a proxy for themselves on social media, 19

  • blockchain, technology underlying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which exploded in value this year, 18

Slang/Informal WOTY

  • wypipo, humorous phonetic spelling of white people used to flag white privilege, cluelessness, or absurdity, 168

  • snatched, good-looking, attractive, 22

  • shooketh, mock-archaic way of expressing shock or excitement, 18

  • RIP, humorous expression of being overwhelmed by emotions or other factors, as if dying, 5

Most Useful

  • die by suicide, a variant of to commit suicide that does not suggest a criminal act, 108

  • -burger, combining form modeled on nothingburger, 60

  • angry react, sad react, expression of anger or sorrow (describing reaction emoji, e.g. on Facebook), 38

  • millennial pink, tint of pink used in goods and social media by and for millennials, 8

Most Likely to Succeed

  • fake news, 226

  • unicorn, a one-of-a-kind person or thing, 20

  • stan, v., be a big fan (from the Eminem song, “Stan”), 2

Most Creative

  • broflake, man or boy who lacks resilience or coping skills in the face of disagreements or setbacks, 100

  • askhole, person who continuously asks ridiculous or obnoxious questions, 78

  • milkshake duck, 50

  • caucacity, blatantly exhibiting white privilege or acting in a stereotypically white way (a blend of Caucasian and audacity), 36

Euphemism of the Year

  • alternative facts, 181

  • avocado toast, a minor indulgence for which people unfairly judge others, esp. millennials, 43

  • internet freedom, removal of net-neutrality regulations by the FCC, 23

  • problematic, an understated way to say something is very wrong or unacceptably politically incorrect, 13

WTF WOTY

  • covfefe, a (probably) mistyped word of unknown meaning used in a Donald Trump tweet, 113

  • raw water, water from natural sources without filters or treatment, 74

  • Oh hi Mark, ohimark, catchphrase based on a line from the notoriously bad movie The Room, 34

  • procrastination nanny, person who moderates productivity for other adults, esp. as a group event, 16

Hashtag of the Year WOTY

  • #MeToo, 231

  • #ReclaimingMyTime, phrase repeated by Rep. Maxine Waters when questioning Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in a House committee hearing, 25

  • #NeverthelessShePersisted, feminist rallying cry based on Mitch McConnell’s warning to Elizabeth Warren during a Senate debate, 12

  • #Resist, slogan of the anti-Trump resistance, 11

Emoji of the Year

  • 🧕 woman with head scarf or hijab, 96

  • 🐐 goat (Greatest Of All Time), 44

  • im🍑 impeach, 50

  • 🤔 thinking face, 53

2017 Words of the Year (WOTY)

23 December 2017

As I did last year, and on occasion before that, I’ve come up with a list of words of the year. I do things a bit differently than other such lists in that I select twelve terms, one for each month. Since similar lists often exhibit a bias toward words that were in vogue at the end of the year when the list was compiled, my hope is that a monthly list will highlight words that were significant earlier in the year. The list is skewed by an American perspective, but since I’m American (and a Texan to boot), them’s the breaks.

I’m interpreting word loosely, including phrases, abbreviations, hashtags, and the like. The selected words are not necessarily new, but they are (mostly) associated with their respective month, either coming to widespread attention during it or associated with some event that happened then.

So, here are the 2017 Wordorigins.org Words of the Year:

[Discuss this post]

January: alternative facts. On 22 January, two days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway used alternative facts in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press to describe Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s repeating Donald Trump’s lies about the audience at the inauguration. The internet and cable TV news exploded at Conway’s use of the phrase, and the phrase went on to be emblematic of the administration’s approach to the truth.

(Source)

February: deep state. The term deep state goes back to at least 2000, where it was used to refer to the national security and police bureaucracies in Turkey that wielded enormous clandestine power. In the opening months of the Trump presidency, the term began to be applied to the United States, particularly those parts of the bureaucracy that the Trump administration believed, rightly or wrongly, to be resisting them.

(Source)

March: originalism. On March 20 the Senate began hearings on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch was approved and took his seat on the bench in April. Gorsuch, like his predecessor Antonin Scalia, is a follower of the doctrine of originalism, the principle that the founders’ intent is the overriding factor in interpreting the constitution. The doctrine is a relatively new and radical one, with the OED dating the term to only 1980.

(Source)

April: re-accommodate. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz used this word as a euphemism for forcibly removing a passenger from an overbooked flight.

(Source)

May: covfefe. Earlier in May, Donald Trump claimed that he had coined the phrase prime the pump (which dates to 1916 in the metaphorical, economic sense, and is even older in the literal, mechanical sense), but on 31 May he did coin covfefe in a tweet sent out just after midnight (“Despite the constant negative press covfefe”). While apparently just a misspelling of coverage, the internet exploded with speculation, some serious, much jocular, about just what covfefe might mean. In and of itself, covfefe would not be worthy of mention, but it is emblematic of Trump’s tweeting, which has dominated the news all year.

(Source)

June: slant. On June 19, the US Supreme Court delivered an 8–0 opinion in Matel v. Tam, which declared that the laws allowing the US Patent and Trademark Office to reject trademarks that “disparage” persons, institutions, and beliefs were unconstitutional. The USPTO had previously rejected the trademark for the Asian-American band, The Slants, led by front man Simon Tam, for being disparaging to Asians. Tam had chosen the name, in part, in an effort to reclaim and meliorate the term. The court’s decision seemingly will permit people and corporations to register other ethnic slurs as trademarks, although the full effect is still unclear. The highest profile beneficiary of the decision is the NFL’s Washington Redskins, which had previously had its trademark status revoked for being disparaging to Native Americans.

(Source)

July: collusion. Use of the word collusion had been bubbling up all along in regard to possible collaboration between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia in getting Trump elected, but it boiled over in July with the release of an email conversation between Donald Trump, Jr., other campaign officials, and agents for Russia which set up a meeting between Trump campaign officials and agents of the Russian government about material that was damaging to Hillary Clinton.

(Source)

August: totality. August was a tough choice. The white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one counter-protester, Heather Heyer, dead and dozens more injured dominated the news, spawning many possible terms (see Antifa in Honorable Mention). But the month also hosted a solar eclipse on 21 August which could be seen from almost anywhere in North America and whose region of totality cut across the continental United States.

(Source)

September: hurricane. Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on 26 August, inundating the city of Houston before moving on to Louisiana, causing 91 deaths, and becoming the costliest storm in history. Hurricane Irma, a category five storm and the strongest Atlantic tropical cyclone on record, tore through the eastern Caribbean, essentially destroying the islands of Barbuda and Saint Martin, and made landfall in the Florida Keys on 10 September, before moving up the west coast of that state. Those were followed by Hurricane Maria, which reached category five status on 18 September and then slammed into Dominica and Puerto Rico, causing catastrophic damage. Maria was the deadliest storm of the season, causing at least 547 deaths.

(Source)

October: gravitational wave. The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the team that confirmed the existence of gravitational waves. Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip Thorne were awarded the prize for their discovery of the waves back in 2015 using LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Einstein had predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his 1915 theory of general relativity, but it took a century for technology catch up and actually detect them. The gravitational waves that were observed had been created by the merger of two black holes. And on 16 October the LIGO observatory announced another detection of gravitational waves, this time created by the merger of two neutron stars.

(Source)

November: #metoo. Following the public allegations of dozens of cases of sexual assault and harassment by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, hundreds of thousands of women took to the internet telling of their own experiences being harassed using the hashtag #metoo. The hashtag had been coined and used by social activist Tarana Burke in 2006. Following the Weinstein revelation, a string of celebrities and politicians have been fired or forced to resign due to past sexual assault, harassment, and mistreatment of women.

(Source)

December: wildfire. On 4 December, the Thomas wildfire started in this hills above Santa Barbara, California. The Thomas fire is the largest in the state’s history, and as of this writing (23 December), it has burned over 273,000 acres (110,000 hectares) and is only 65% contained. While wildfires are an annual occurrence in California, 2017 is the worst fire season on record, with 8,778 fires so far and over 1,370,000 acres (554,000 hectares) burned.

(Source)

Honorable Mention: The honorable mentions are terms that rose to prominence during the year but were either not associated with a particular month or which lost out to another term.

  • Antifa, a loose confederation of anti-fascist groups in the United States who stage counterprotests to fascist and white supremacist demonstrations and are often prepared to use violence to quash fascist demonstrations if necessary

  • carnage, a word much used in Trump’s inaugural address on 20 January

  • cladding, a term for the exterior covering a building, a factor in the Grenfell Tower fire in West London on 14 June in which 71 people died

  • dreamer, a term for undocumented immigrants to the United States who were brought into the country as children, after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, first proposed in Congress in 2009, but never passed; President Obama had used executive orders to implement the provisions of the act, which allowed a subset of those minors to remain in the United States; the Trump administration reversed that action in September

  • emolument, an archaic word for payment; the US Constitution forbids the president from accepting emoluments from the states or from foreign governments, and there is some debate as to whether Trump’s business interests are in violation of that clause

  • extreme vetting, a term used by the Trump administration to refer to more rigorous screening of immigrants to the US

  • Nevertheless, she persisted, a phrase used by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on 7 February in reference to Elizabeth Warren’s reading of a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King arguing against the appointment of Jeff Sessions to the federal bench, a reading that was objected to as violating Senate rules; the phrase subsequently became a feminist slogan

  • subtweeting, the practice of tweeting about someone or something without directly referencing them

  • take a knee, NFL players took to going down on one knee during the national anthem to protest unequal treatment of African-Americans by police

5 Ways to a Faster PhD

27 July 2017

This article has absolutely nothing to do with etymology or language (except in the tangential way that it is about professional studies in the humanities), but it’s something I wrote about the problem of how long it takes to complete a PhD in the humanities.

It’s probably not of much interest to those outside academia.

And sorry about the click-baity headline; that was the editor’s idea, not mine.

Emojis and the Law

28 June 2017

Currently, my favorite podcast is Opening Arguments, in which interlocutors Andrew Torrez, a real-life lawyer, and Thomas Smith, not a lawyer, discuss topical legal questions.

While they typically stick to the law, in a recent episode they delved into the intersection of linguistics and the law. In the episode, the two hosts are joined by another lawyer, Denise Howell, to discuss how US law is treating the phenomenon of emojis. The discussion is quite good and free of the usual misconceptions about language that erupt when non-linguists take on the topic of language.

You can listen to it here.

CMOS and the Singular They

4 April 2017

The Chicago Manual of Style, one of the major academic style guides in the US, is inching their way toward acceptance of the singular they, that is the use of they to refer to a singular antecedent when the gender of the antecedent is unknown, generic, or non-binary. The University of Chicago Press is publishing the seventeenth edition of their widely used manual in September, and they’ve begun announcing what some of the changes will be, among them a shift toward using they for singular antecedents, but it is less han a full-throated acceptance.

CMOS 17 lays out two uses of the singular they. The first is using they to replace the generic he, that is the use of the masculine pronouns when the gender is unknown or generic. Use of he in this context is considered sexist by many and has fallen out of favor by most publishers and style guides, but agreement on what to replace it with has not been achieved until quite recently, when they started to gain rapid acceptance. CMOS 17 “accepts” the singular they in informal writing and “does not prohibit” its use in formal writing, although it recommends other strategies to avoid using it if possible.

This is a change from CMOS 16 (2010), which reads in section 5.222:

On the one hand, it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers to use the generic masculine pronoun (he in reference to no one in particular). On the other hand, it is unacceptable to a great many readers (often different readers) either to resort to nontraditional gimmicks to avoid the generic masculine (by using he/she or s/he, for example) or to use they as a kind of singular pronoun. Either way, credibility is lost with some readers.

CMOS 17 also advises editors to be flexible and take the book’s or article’s context into account when deciding what pronoun to use. It also says that the author’s wishes should be “always receive consideration.” In other words, unless there is a very good reason not to use it, editors using CMOS 17 shouldn’t dictate to their authors on whether or not to use the singular they in generic contexts.

The second use is a topic that went unaddressed in earlier editions of the manual, the use of they to refer to a specific person who does not identify as either male or female, someone who does not conform to the the traditional gender binary. For all contexts, formal and informal, CMOS 17 says that “a person’s stated preference for a specific pronoun should be respected.”

CMOS 17 says the singular they should take a plural verb, much like you does. (You was also originally a plural form, which took over from the singular thou.)

While its wording may not indicate it, this move toward accepting the singular they is a big shift. In practice, it means that most publishers who use CMOS will accept the singular they. By the time CMOS 18 hits the streets in another seven or so years, I predict that it will be a non-issue.