Springfield, MA, Dec. 10, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publisher helping millions of people understand and use language better, has announced its Word of the Year for 2019. The selection is entirely data driven: the word must be frequently looked up at Merriam-Webster.com, and it must show a significant increase in lookups over the previous year. The top word, and its runners-up, shed light on topics and ideas that sparked the nation’s interest in 2019.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2019 is they, with lookups of the word trending higher all year long as well as spiking at different points over the course of the year. One of those spikes occurred in September, when Merriam-Webster’s definition of they was expanded to include its use as a pronoun referring to a person who identifies as nonbinary (that is, neither entirely male nor entirely female). That spike was, however, not part of the Word of the Year selection consideration. From January's Paris Fashion Week featuring nonbinary model Oslo Grace to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s April statement about her child being gender-nonconforming to the attention that June's Pride celebrations brought to nonbinary people, they drove people to the dictionary frequently in 2019, with lookups substantially higher all year long.
“Pronouns are among the language's most commonly used words, and like other common words (think go, do, and have) they tend to be mostly ignored by dictionary users. But over the past year or so, as people have increasingly encountered the nonbinary use, we've seen searches for they grow dramatically. In 2019 the increase in lookups for they was so significant and sustained that it stood out from all the other top lookups when we went to analyze the data,” explains Emily Brewster, Senior Editor. “People were clearly encountering this new use and turning to the dictionary for clarity and for usage guidance.”
Gallery: Get more detail on all the 2019 Words of the Year
Other top lookups include quid pro quo, meaning “something given or received for something else,” and impeach, defined as “to charge (a public official) before a competent tribunal with misconduct in office.” Both terms have perched atop the lookup list during the impeachment investigation and hearings involving President Trump.
While politics sent many people to the dictionary this year, entertainment and pop culture inspired lookups as well. Interest in the word crawdad shot up after the novel Where the Crawdad Sings made it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and camp spiked during the gala event celebrating the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new fashion exhibit, Camp: Notes on Fashion. Camp is a notoriously complex term, but here it was employed to mean “a style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture.”
Another common word that made this year’s list is the, with lookups spiking after The Ohio State University filed a trademark application for the word in order to protect new branding logos that emphasize the "The" that is part of the official name of the institution.
Video: See Peter Sokolowski talk about the Word of the Year
“We have come to expect words from politics and big news stories to be looked up in large numbers, but this year we also saw a new focus on questions about words that were themselves the news. Seeing such interest in they and the shows interest in the basic building blocks of language.” adds Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large for Merriam-Webster. “Through the dictionary, we see proof that words matter, whether we are discussing national politics or personal identity.”
As part of this announcement, Merriam-Webster has teamed up with Threadless, the global design community, to launch a design challenge around this year’s Word of the Year. Launching today, the three-week challenge calls on artists to create a design inspired by they, this year’s Word of the Year. The winning design will be featured on t-shirts and other quality lifestyle products sold in the new Merriam-Webster Shop.
See the full list of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year here.
About Merriam-Webster Inc.
For over 180 years, Merriam-Webster has been America’s leading and most-trusted provider of language information. Each month, our award-winning websites, apps, and popular social media channels offer guidance to tens of millions of visitors. In print, our publications include Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary (among the best-selling books in American history) and dictionaries for English-language learners. All Merriam-Webster products and services are backed by the largest team of professional dictionary editors and writers in America, and one of the largest in the world.
For more information, visit Merriam-Webster.com, an official Webby Award Winner for 2017 & 2018, and follow @MerriamWebster on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
About Threadless
Founded in 2000, Threadless is an ecommerce apparel company and online artist community that’s committed to making great together. Consumers vote on artist-submitted designs that become purchasable catalog products. In 2016, Threadless launched the print-on-demand Artist Shops platform to make selling art online easier. The turnkey merchandise solution allows individuals, companies, and nonprofits to create their own custom-branded online store for free.
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