In an age of deep falsification and post-truth, when artificial intelligence rises and Elon Musk turns Twitter into X, Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”
Original cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice.
Searches for the word are routinely heavy on dictionary company sites but have been ramped up over the years, editor-in-chief Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.
“We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” he said ahead of Monday’s announcement of this year’s word. “What we’ve realized is that when we question authenticity, we value it more.”
Sokolowski and his team did not delve into why people go to dictionaries and websites to look up certain words.
Instead, they chase data about search spikes and related world events.
This time, there was no huge boost at any time but a steady increase in interest in the “native”.
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.” Getty Images
This is the year of artificial intelligence, to be sure, but also the moment when ChatGPT maker OpenAI has a leadership crisis.
Taylor Swift and Prince Harry pursue authenticity in their words and actions.
Musk himself, at February’s World Government Summit in Dubai, urged company heads, politicians, ministers and other leaders to “speak authentically” on social media by running their own accounts.
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“Can we trust whether students wrote this paper? Can we believe if a politician made this statement? We don’t always believe what we see anymore,” Sokolowski said. “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We now realize that authenticity is the show itself.”
The Merriam-Webster entry for “original” is busy with meaning.
There is “neither false nor artificial: real, real,” as in a genuine cockney accent.
There is “consonance with one’s own personality, spirit or character.” There is “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming or based on fact.”
There is “made or made in the same way as the original.” And, perhaps most significantly, there is “adherence to the original to reproduce important features.”
“Authentic” follows “gaslighting” in 2022. And 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Merriam-Webster choosing the top word.
The company’s data cruncher filters evergreen words like “love” and “influence” against the ever-higher “impact” in searches among 500,000 words defined online.
This year, wordsmiths are also filtering out a lot of five-letter words because Wordle and Quordle players are clearly using the company’s site to find them as they play the daily game, Sokolowski said.
Sokolowski, a lexicologist, and his colleagues have a group of runners-up for words of the year that also attract incredible traffic.
They include “X” (searches spiked in July after Musk rebranded Twitter), “EGOT” (got a boost in February when Viola Davis achieved rare quadruple award status with a Grammy) and “Elemental,” the title of a Pixar film new that saw a spike in searches in June.
Rounding up the company’s top buzzwords in 2023, in no particular order:
The Merriam-Webster entry for “original” is busy with meaning.Getty Images
RIZZ: Slang for “charm or romantic appeal” and apparently short for charisma. Merriam-Webster added the word to its online dictionary in September and it has been among the top searches ever since, Sokolowski said.
KIBBUTZ: There has been a major increase in searches for “communal farms or settlements in Israel” after Hamas terrorists attacked several near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. The first Kibbutz in Israel was founded around 1909.
EXPLODED: The June 18 explosion of the sunken ship Titan on a commercial expedition to explore the wreckage of the Titanic sent searches skyrocketing for this word, which means “burst into.” “It’s a story that completely dominates the world,” Sokolowski said.
DEADNAME: High interest in what Merriam-Webster defines as “a name given to a transgender person at birth and no longer used during transition.” The search follows an onslaught of laws aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights across the country.
DOPPELGANGER: Sokolowski calls this “lover’s word.” Merriam-Webster defines it as a “double,” “alter ego” or “phantom counterpart.” It comes from German folklore. Interest in the word surrounds Naomi Klein’s latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” released this year. She uses her own often confused experiences with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf as a springboard into the broader narrative of the crazy times we all live in.
CORONATION: King Charles III had one on May 6, sending searches for the word up 15,681% over the previous year, Sokolowski said. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act or event of enthronement.”
DEEPFAKE: The dictionary company’s definition is “an image or recording that has been altered and convincingly manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” Interest increased after Musk’s lawyer in a Tesla lawsuit said he was often the subject of fake videos and again after Ryan Reynolds’ likeness appeared in fake AI-generated Tesla ads.
DYSTOPIAN: Climate chaos brings interest to the word. So are books, movies and TV fare that are meant to entertain. “It’s unusual for me to see the word used in both contexts,” Sokolowski said.
COVENANT: Searches for the word meaning “usually a formal, solemn and binding agreement” increased on March 27, after the mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter was a former student who was killed by police after killing three students and three adults.
Interest also increased with this year’s release of “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” and Abraham Verghese’s long-awaited new novel, “The Covenant of Water,” which was selected by Oprah Winfrey as a book club pick.
Recently, shortly after US Representative Mike Johnson ascended to the speakership of the House, the 2022 interview with the Louisiana congressman was circulated again.
He discussed how his then-teenage son became an “accountability partner” in Covenant Eyes, software that tracks browsing history and sends reports to each partner when porn or other potentially objectionable sites are viewed.
INDICT: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on criminal charges in four criminal cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, DC, in addition to fighting a lawsuit threatening his real estate empire.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
