2022’s ‘Word of the Year’ proves we should stop this inane tradition

We should probably be grateful. If not for the Oxford English Dictionary’s inane pandering, we might not have realized what’s really needed to salvage our mother tongue:

It’s time to kill the “Word of the Year.”

This week’s reveal of goblin mode as Oxford’s Word of the Year laid bare everything that’s wrong with this clickbaity pseudo-tradition. The dictionary’s editors typically debate among themselves about which word perfectly captures the linguistic zeitgeist, but for 2022 they narrowed it down to three “words,” which they then tossed to a goofy online poll.

I generously use quotation marks around “words,” given that none of the three options should even qualify. The Oxford English Dictionary says goblin mode is “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” But it gives that definition in a press release announcing the word of the year; the term — believe it or not — doesn’t appear in the dictionary.

Not even in the Oxford English Dictionary itself.

The other “words” that voters could choose from, in the most embarrassingly undemocratic election since Bush v. Gore? Metaverse, which is less a word than it is a floundering branding exercise by Mark Zuckerberg. And #IStandWith, which got a boost this year from those expressing solidarity with Ukraine, but didn’t have the kind of real-world impact of, say, #MeToo (which lost out to feminism in Merriam-Webster’s parallel competition in 2017). Google search trends show the world lost interest in Ukraine after a little more than a month; #IStandWith wasn’t even Word of the Spring, let alone of the year.

» READ MORE: Oxford Dictionaries names 'goblin mode' its word of the year

Sure, “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy” sounds like the kind of thing that could use a good single term, but goblin mode hasn’t caught on much beyond gaming communities.

Even if the Oxford English Dictionary had picked three bulletproof contenders to choose from, internet polls are a terrible way to make important decisions. Though most dictionaries are descriptivist, meaning they describe how language is used by the public, those descriptions are the result of years of painstaking research and carefully calibrated methods.

Not plebiscite click-orgies.

You’d think the Brits would have learned their lesson in 2016, after their Natural Environment Research Council solicited internet submissions to name a new polar research ship and ended up with Boaty McBoatface. In 2022, the move reeks of desperation for attention, like when Elon Musk polled Twitter about whether he should reinstate @realDonaldTrump’s account — something he’d already decided he was going to do anyway.

It’s not just the Oxford English Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, though it selected the perfectly defensible gaslighting as its 2022 Word of the Year, has embarrassed itself plenty in recent years. Remember surreal, the word of the year in 2016? Of course you don’t. Or when they chose both socialism and capitalism in 2012, only to choose the general suffix -ism just three years later? Or culture, which was chosen in 2014, despite the fact that web searches show its prevalence was relatively consistent for years before and after that? (Cancel culture wouldn’t emerge till 2016, and didn’t catch fire till 2020.)

“Remember ‘surreal,’ the word of the year in 2016? Of course you don’t.”

It’s time to combine trends: Apply cancel culture to the Word of the Year nonsense that’s already jumped the sharks on both sides of the Atlantic, and put it out of its misery. For dictionaries, it’s become a joyless annual exercise that, far from being fun, is unapologetically self-indulgent and lazy.

If only there were some word to describe that.

The Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, looks at how language, grammar, and punctuation shape our world, and appears biweekly. Send comments, questions, and cataphora to jeff@theangrygrammarian.com.