Editor's Corner

Good morning!

At the beginning of each year, various dictionaries reveal their “word of the year.” They choose a word that has been most often looked up or a word they feel represents something we all experienced during the previous year. When deciding on the word for 2023, Dictionary.com gave themselves this prompt: “Using lexicography and data science, choose a single word that best represents, at this moment, AI’s many profound ramifications for the future of language and life.”

What did they come up with? According to Dictionary.com, the word of the year for 2023 is hallucinate. Here is what they have to say about this winner of a word:

Hallucinate is one of many new terms related to artificial intelligence. AI breakthroughs define so much of 2023, which is why we added lots of new AI entries just this year.

Many of you are looking up the new hallucinate. It means “to produce false information contrary to a user’s wishes, and to present it as if it’s true and factual.” AI chat bots work by picking up the words that are most similar to the text they were trained on. That’s not always the same as facts.

Hallucinate represents 2023 because this is the year that AI became widely used and its problems widely known. AI will change the way we work, learn, create, communicate, and how we think about ourselves. For a dictionary, it doesn’t get much more important than that.

And following is a list of other words that made Dictionary.com’s 2023 Word of the Year short list. They say, “These five terms represent the intersection of language with some of the year’s most significant events and trends”:

• strike

The word strike had a high-profile role in the news narrative of the year, which included several prominent and lengthy labor strikes by screenwriters, actors, auto workers, healthcare professionals, service workers, and others.

• rizz

Rizz was the year’s most durable—and, on Dictionary.com, most-searched—slang term. Popularized by streaming star Kai Cenat, it refers to attractiveness, charm, or skill in flirtation that allows one to easily attract romantic partners. It is thought to be taken from the middle part of the word charisma.

• wokeism

The evolution of woke and related terms like wokeism continues, with wokeism in particular emerging as a lightning rod and signifier of broad political opposition. We saw a massive 2,300% increase in pageviews for wokeism in 2023.

• indicted

This year’s unprecedented legal activity in the context of U.S. government and politics was reflected in multiple significant search spikes this year, including for the terms indicted (300% increase), arraignment (198% increase), and exculpatory (15% increase).

• wildfire

This year’s devastating wildfires in Maui, Canada, and in many other parts of the world were some of the latest examples of how climate change is contributing to extreme weather events and a new potency in the terms we use to refer to them.

But there’s more! For the first time ever, dictionary.com also selected a word that represents the cultural vibe of 2023…and the Vibe of the Year word is eras, which is defined this way: “periods of time in a person’s life characterized by something distinctive and noticeable, such as a particular emotional state, relationship, achievement, or interest.”

Example: I’ve lived through three separate eras just this year, but I feel like I’m finally in my lucky girl era.

Now that 2023 is firmly behind us, let’s all look forward to a happy and healthy 2024. Cheers to us!

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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