Knowing the word of the year reveals whether you have rizz

Choosing a "word of the year" – an honor you may not know exists – is a little bit like picking Academy Award winners or members of sports halls of fame. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

And in the final month of 2023 we saw different organizations pick words of the year.(remember: We're now in 2024! If you still write the date anywhere, you'll be tempted to write 2023. Don't. Although if you're like me, you'll occasionally date something by starting with "19 . . ." and then realize you're in another millennium).

The Big Three organizations in the word of the year arena – Oxford, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com – picked different words, although two were similar. All are instructive and all give us pause to consider what's coming in 2024.

Before we get there, a challenge: What word emerged for you in 2023? What was the dominant word in 2023?

For me, "arthritis" comes to mind. And "Brock Purdy." And "pizza," like every year. But none of them were named word of the year.

Here are the winners: For Oxford, it was "rizz" (I'll explain later). For Merriam-Webster, it was "authentic" and for Dictionary.com, it was "hallucinate." 

The latter two are associated with artificial intelligence: Authentic indicates something not created by AI, hallucinate now means error-filled writing by AI.

That makes sense. The coming of AI was one of the dominant cultural themes of 2023 and the desire to not be fooled by AI is prominent.

Rizz, as promised, is short for "charisma," despite having two "Z"s and sounding vaguely obscene. If you've got rizz, people will believe what you say is authentic, even if it's a hallucination.

The prominence of a theme for the biggest words of 2023 echoes previous years. In 2020, for instance, Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster each picked "pandemic."  In 2021, Merriam-Webster and Oxford picked "vaccine" and "vax." 

While the ritual of picking a word of the year is a modern construct, I can confidently say that the word of the year in 1347 for all three organizations would have been "plague" and the word of the year in 1794 would have been "guillotine."

The year's big cultural trends tend to be the year's top word. In 2004, Dictionary.com chose "blog" and the next year Oxford chose "podcast." Those words are only 20 years old!

So what should we expect in 2024? Based on my research over the first six days of the year, the word of the year should be "2024." However, I suspect some sort of technology or a political movement or the coming Super Bowl will have an impact (Purdyism? Bosa? Deebo?).

The word of the year tells you plenty about the 12-month period. If we only knew 2024's top word, we'd be better prepared, although it's unclear whether we have enough rizz to provide an authentic choice and avoid a hallucination.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.