"From its origins 35 years ago, when the American Dialect Society attempted to find a word capable of summing up the past 12 months, this particular Americanism crossed the Atlantic in the mid-2000s and has since established itself as the closest thing to an awards season that the English language has. There's dozens now, said Jonathon Green, an author and lexicographer who specialises on the evolution of slang."
"It seems to me that if you have anything to do with publishing a reference book, or certainly a dictionary of some sort, you are duty-bound to come out with one of these things. Other linguists suggest that the final choices are driven more by the need to attract public attention than any deep linguistic analysis. Robbie Love, a sociolinguist based at Aston University, says that the lexicographers behind the selections are themselves aware that it is not an entirely objective, scientific process,"
Different dictionaries named different words for 2025, including Collins' "vibe coding", Cambridge's "parasocial" and Oxford's "rage bait". The practice began 35 years ago with the American Dialect Society and spread to the UK in the mid-2000s, becoming common among reference publishers. Lexicographers often feel obliged to produce a word-of-the-year selection when publishing dictionaries. Many linguists argue that selections aim to attract public attention and to be distinct rather than to provide objective scientific analysis. Words of the year are chosen to capture public and lexicographers' imagination. Data analysis measured frequency of usage for selections since 2010.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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