You’re at a Christmas party where the conversation is about buying NFTs; a quaranteen mutters ‘so cheugy’ at her aunt’s skinny jeans (and her criticism of the Metaverse). Any idea what’s going on? 

Last year was unprecedented. 2021 has hardly been any less baffling, but we’ve endeavoured to find the right new words to describe them.

It’s what homo sapiens excel at, and it’s what lexicographers such as Fiona McPherson, a senior editor on the Oxford English Dictionary, spend their lives recording. Every year we can look back on the year through the words we’ve used the most. And for the OED their word of 2021 is, unsurprisingly…. ‘vaxxed’.  

McPherson says of the annual ritual: “WOTY is an opportunity to see what words are summing up the year. it doesn’t have to be a brand-new word, but it needs to say something new. Normally that goes hand in hand with seeing an increase in its usage.”

The pandemic this year has also given us; anti-vaxxer, strollout, missed-bump and brain-tickler.

Whether we’ll still be referring to swabs as brain-ticklers in years to come is why the OED usually takes its time before committing itself to a word (‘Bants’ was only added last year despite its having irritated us since 2008).

McPherson and her team upload new words to the online dictionary four times a year. They added Covid-19 within three months of it becoming a thing last year, but generally they are the giant tortoise of lexicography.

“A lot of the words are probably going to be quite ephemeral. We’re not going to need ‘Fauci ouchie’ in years to come. However, a ‘vaxxy’ (a vaccine selfie), has a good chance of sticking around,” says McPherson.

Language expert, Chris West, the author of Strong Words and CEO of Verbal Identity, is more of the hare. He is as likely to be consulting Urban Dictionary as the OED, if only to understand what his 16-year-old daughter is talking about.

“There’s the ‘official way’ or monitoring words of the year, which is quite scientific, and then there’s the more fun way of keeping your ear to the ground.

“When you hear a word you don’t quite understand, it means there’s something happening in society that’s worth looking at a bit more.”

Fashions in language are shorthands for understanding the zeitgeist. West says that whatever age you are, there are usually new words being used by someone younger than you.

Right now, social justice is a rich source of lexical inspiration: dictionary.com chose allyship as its word of the year. As an American dictionary, West says they tend to pick up on movements in social inclusion sooner than we do over here.

In doing so they highlight the changing role of dictionaries; being part of a movement looking forward, “Rather than a backward-looking record of what has been,” says.

Personally he’s excited by allyship. “It represents what I think more of us need to be conscious of.” Its usage, he thinks, is “more in hope than in reality.”

Of course though, allyship isn’t a new word. The OED has its first reference back in 1849, which, McPherson says, is not surprising: “Because if it’s the state or condition of being an ally, that’s going to cover a lot of different allies.” It’s new meaning though is chiefly supporting the rights of a minority or marginalised group.

Whether you share West’s view that allyship points to a future where a greater awareness of the importance of social inclusion needs to be supported by those who are not disempowered, might depend on how you understand and use one of our most divisive ‘new’ words; woke.

Woke was used in the 2010s within the African-American community to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism. It can be traced as far back as the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys”.

Today it is often used pejoratively to signal over-zealous application of ideologies. It has become an insult.

“It’s taken on much more shape and character,” says West.

Woke, and other words that have emerged from the social justice movement, West says, reveal that society is becoming more critical, or more precisely, judgmental and trying to hold people to  higher standards: “Three years ago we would have loved companies to be talking about their ESG [Environmental, social and governance], now we’re saying ‘hold on, you’re greenwashing’.”

His word of the year would be anti-vaxxer. He’s fascinated by the shape it has quickly taken on. “There’s this notion that there are anti-vaxxers who are almost like fifth columnists. The word has kind of solidified and has all these values and meanings attached.”

Language might reflect and shape our beliefs, but it’s not immune to fashion.

Yes, using this year’s buzz words can make you sound hip. The verbal equivalent of wearing flares rather than cheugy (the word used by Gen Z to mock Millennial trends) skinny jeans. But no one wants to be mutton dressed as lamb. Some, like the ones West’s teenager daughter uses, are best left for younger people to enjoy.

So what new words can we expect to hear next year?

McPherson speaks for all of us when she says “it would be nice if the language landscape wasn’t quite so dominated with words to do with Covid.”

West meanwhile has his eyes on the world of politics

“Autocrat is going to be a word of 2022. What we’re seeing is greater division in people’s belief in political leaders. We’re seeing the emergence of non-democratic leaders just outside the edge of Europe.”

Whatever the words of 2022 are, they’re unlikely to be anything brand new. And while they can be fun to use, if we’re not to reduce ourselves to a set of stereotypes, sometimes there’s an argument that where one word would do, perhaps we should use a few more.

Chris West’s words of 2021

Strollout = an australianism that was MacQuarie Dictionary’s word of the year. There, the vaccine rollout was so slow it was described as more of a strollout

Antivaxxer = someone opposed to vaccination; shows what’s happening in society.

Missed bump = instead of fist bump, because when we all came back into the office, what did we do? A handshake? A fist bump? It often ended up as a missed bump.

Meta = if you want to talk about business this is a key word. There was a metaverse before Mark Zuckerbeg changed the name of his business, but this signals a big change.

The Great Resignation = making a late run. You might already be fed up reading about it, but maybe it’s just started.

Girl boss = now being used ironically, as a pusback against millenial white feminism

So, “if it’s not going well for me, I guess I’ll have to gaslight gatekeep girl boss my way to the top”

Quaranteen = a teenager who lived through Covid-19 or a child who became a teenager in this decade.

Cheugy = commonly claimed to have been popularized by Gen Z to mock lifestyle trends associated with the early 2010s

NFT = stands for non-fungible token. NFTs allow you to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and keep track of who owns them using the blockchain.  It can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, animated GIFs, songs, or items in video games.