Ever since the American Dialect Society first selected a Word of the Year at its 1990 conference, more than half a dozen English dictionaries have made it an annual ritual to anoint a word or phrase that encapsulates the zeitgeist of the year.
In 2003, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary bestowed the crown on the word "democracy." In what may be a nod to what's happened in politics in the 21 years since then, Webster yesterday selected "polarization" as its word for 2024. It joins popular words and phrases of the moment highlighted by other dictionaries, including "brat," "manifest," "demure" and "brain rot."
The winners are selected in various ways. This year, the editors of the Oxford dictionaries selected their top word in part based on votes cast by the public from a short list of candidates. The winner - "brain rot" - encapsulates the mind-numbing effects of excessive social media use. Oxford University Press said the frequency of the phrase increased 230% from the previous year.
Amazingly, the term isn't a new concept. In the concluding section of the American classic "Walden," published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau complained that "brain rot" prevailed "widely and fatally."
Given the steep decline in the sale of printed reference works 170 years later, announcements of "words of the year" raise the visibility of the publishers' wares. But their choices also offer a window into the spirit of the times.
As a cognitive scientist who studies language and communication, I saw, in this year's batch of winners, the myriad ways digital life is influencing English language and culture.
This isn't the only year in which nearly all the winners fell under a single thematic umbrella. In 2020, epidemic-related terminology - COVID, lockdown, pandemic and quarantine - surged to the fore.
Usually, however, there's more of a mix, with some selections more prescient and useful than others. In 2005, for example, the New Oxford American Dictionary chose "podcast" - right before the programming format exploded in popularity.
More commonly, the celebrated neologisms don't age well.
In 2008, the New Oxford American Dictionary selected hypermiling, or driving to maximize fuel efficiency. Permacrisis - an ongoing emergency - got the nod from the Collins Dictionary editors in 2022. Few people use those terms today.
I already anticipate one of this year's selections - "brat" - made popular by pop star Charli XCX falling by the wayside. Chosen just before the 2024 U.S. election by Collins Dictionary, the publisher defined it as "characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude."
It was the name of Charli XCX's chart-topping album released in June 2024; the next month, the singer tweeted that "kamala IS brat," signaling her support for the Democratic presidential candidate. Of course, with Harris' loss, brat has lost some of its luster.
Other 2024 words of the year also have social media to thank for their popularity.
In late November, Cambridge Dictionary settled on manifest as its word of the year, defining it as "to use methods such as visualization and affirmation to help you imagine achieving something you want."
The term took off when singer Dua Lipa used it in an interview. She seems to have picked up on the concept from self-help communities on TikTok.
Another word that clearly benefited from social media was "demure," chosen in late November by Dictionary.com. Although the word dates to the 15th century, it went viral in a TikTok video posted by content creator and influencer Jools Lebron in early August. In it, she described appropriate workplace behavior as "very demure, very mindful."
The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English settled on "enshittification" as its word in early December. Coined by Canadian-British writer Cory Doctorow in 2022, it refers to the gradual decline in functionality or usability of a specific platform or service - something that Google, TikTok, X and dating app users can attest to.
Merriam-Webster landed on "polarization," which it defined as "division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes."
In the U.S., political polarization has a number of causes, ranging from gerrymandering to in-group biases.
But social media undoubtedly plays a big role. A 2021 review by the Brookings Institution pointed to "the relationship between tech platforms and the kind of extreme polarization that can lead to the erosion of democratic values and partisan violence." And journalist Max Fisher has reported on the ways in which the algorithms deployed by these social media platforms "steer users toward outrage" - an observation that experimental studies of the phenomenon have supported.
Despite the polarization of political and social life, the dictionaries, at the very least, have arrived at a consensus: The tech giants are shaping our lives and our language, for better or for worse.
Roger J. Kreuz is associate dean and professor of psychology at the University of Memphis.
This commentary is published in partnership with The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to bringing the knowledge of academic experts to the public.