A dictionary on display in the Bates Reading Room at the main branch of the Boston Public Library.
It's an annual tradition for language dorks everywhere: Dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and Oxford announce their words of the year, either newly minted terms or ones that rose to prominence in the previous year. The Oxford Dictionaries will reveal their pick on Monday night.
In some years the chosen words feel more like overplayed songs — we’d be just as happy if we never heard them again.
The American Dialect Society picked “not!” — with exclamation point — as its word of the year in 1992. It was surely already overused by then, although it's begun to look cute again through the haze of '90s nostalgia. "Hashtag,” their 2012 pick, has also lapsed into disrepute through overuse on Twitter — hashtags are increasingly a form of self-aware irony.
Some of the annual words inevitably fall on hard times, never living up to their early promise. Remember “hypermiling,” Oxford Dictionaries’ 2008 pick? Me neither.
But some words of the year have stuck with us, becoming an indispensible part of our lexicon. Oxford Dictionaries picked “podcast,” a word very close to our hearts, way back in 2005. Merriam-Webster tapped “blog” in 2004 — and, if not for blogs, how would you be reading this very blog post? Oxford’s 2013 choice, “selfie,” doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, although its eponymous TV show hasn’t lasted.
So, given the experts’ checkered record, we thought we might be able to come up with something better. Given 2014’s slurry of key words — “quarantine,” “polar vortex,” “bae” — what would you pick as The One? See if you can surprise us with something more clever, and less groan-worthy, than the official choices. We'll announce our winning word just ahead of Oxford's on Monday and see how we measure up.
What's your pick for Word of the Year 2014? Tell us in a comment below and your choice might make it onto Sideshow, a new podcast from PRI's SoundWorks network of podcasts that looks at the intersection of culture and technology.
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