2024 words of the year point to power, perils, ephemeral nature of digital life

By Roger J. Kreuz, University of Memphis Ever since the American Dialect Society selected a Word of the Year at its conference in 1990, over half a dozen English dictionaries have anointed an annual word or phrase that’s meant to encapsulate the zeitgeist of the prior year. In 2003, the publisher of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary began bestowing a crown. On Dec. 9, 2024, it selected “polarization” as its word of the year, which joins a list of 2024 winners from other dictionaries that includes “brat,” “manifest,” “demure,” “brain rot” and “enshittification.” The terms that are honored are selected in a variety of ways. For example, this year the editors of the Oxford dictionaries allowed the public to cast votes for their favorite from a short list of candidates. Brain rot emerged victorious. Other publishers rely on the acumen of their editors, augmented by measures of popularity such as the number of online searches for a particular term. Given the steep decline in the sale of printed reference works, these yearly announcements raise the visibility of the publisher’s wares. But their choices also offer a window into the spirit of the times. As a cognitive scientist who studies language and communication,...