Each year, word of the year gets darker. Six-seven' may be annoying but it's bucked that trend | Coco Khan

"What connects the word vape, the crying-laughing emoji and the phrase squeezed middle? No, it's not just a biting crossword clue for millennial: they have all previously been crowned word of the year. Admittedly, there are now so many words of the year that, if they were physical objects, they could make a decent-sized museum collection. Which, as it happens, is exactly how I like to imagine them artefacts of their time, telling a story of a changing society."

"This year's winners from parasocial (Cambridge Dictionary's choice) to rage bait (Oxford English Dictionary), 67 (six-seven) (Dictionary.com) and slop (Merriam-Webster) will join the group, though where in the museum remains to be seen. Will they sit in the permanent collection, along with 2005's podcast and 2015's binge-watch? Or the archive, where irrelevances such as 2007's w00t are packed off to, to see out their days alongside David Cameron's lesser-remembered very bad idea: not Brexit (Collins, 2016), but big society (Oxford, 2010)."

"To look back at the winning words from the past 20 years is to look back at life through rose-tinted glasses. Seriously, people bang on about the hope and optimism of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, but how about a 2006 Britain seemingly so untroubled that its Oxford word of the year was bovvered? Or a country where, in contrast to 2024's shared cultural experience of enshittification, it was sudoku (Oxford, 2005)?"

Annual words of the year assemble linguistic artifacts that mark social priorities, trends, technologies, and anxieties. Recent winners range from parasocial and rage bait to 67 and slop, demonstrating diverse cultural phenomena. Historical selections such as podcast, binge-watch, bovvered, sudoku, science, and change reflect distinct moods, innovations, and perceived optimism. Some winners anticipated larger events, exemplified by credit crunch and bailout preceding economic turmoil. The cumulative list functions like a potential museum collection, with items that may enter a permanent display or be relegated to archives as dated curiosities.

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