Dictionary

In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is "authentic."

The abbreviation of artificial intelligence (AI) has been named the Collins Word of the Year for 2023, the dictionary publisher said on Oct. 31.

Lexicographers at Collins Dictionary said use of the term had "accelerated" and that it had become the dominant conversation of 2023.

Stemming from the Ancient Greek word "toxikon," the English word "toxic" has been crowned as the word of year in 2018 by Oxford Dictionaries.

According to the dictionary, the word was the one that best captured the "ethos, mood, or preoccupations" of 2018. The word was judged to "have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance."

Like "fake news," the concept of "overtourism" has started to creep into our language. Although still in their "teething" stage, these two terms need time to be described fully in dictionaries.

“Youthquake” has been crowned as Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year 2017, following a five-fold increase in usage.

Oxford Dictionaries has deemed "youthquake" the 2017 word of the year, reflecting what it calls a "political awakening" among millennial voters.

It was first coined in the 1960s by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who used it to describe sudden changes in fashion, music and attitudes.

Language is alive and constantly evolving with new words or phrases being added to dictionaries. The Greek crisis introduced some neologisms in the vocabulary of economics and journalism and they eventually found their way into the Oxford online dictionary. ‘Brexit’ is another term referring to a possible British exit from the EU that also was included in the dictionary.