Patents on the soles of your shoes...: WOTTIES 2023

Showing posts with label WOTTIES 2023. Show all posts

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Terminology - The other ADS 2023 WOTTIES and candidates.

In fact, the distinguished, 134-year-old, American Dialect Society (ADS) selects the Word of the Year (WOTY) in eight (no-less-interesting) additional categories. Words of the year (WOTTIES) selected in categories, such as the Most creative WOTY, the Acronym/Initialism of the year, the Euphemism of the year, the Most useful/Most likely to succeed WOTY, or the Digital WOTY.

Below, a copy of the list of each of the ADS Word of the Year (WOTY) categories, released to the press. The categories appear with indexed category winners (marked with an asterisk), together with the category candidates, including candidates in the Word of the year 2023 category, the winner of ‘em all.

The terms are listed with their definitions, or expansions in cases of abbreviation. The numbers appearing at the end of lines indicate the number of votes, or runoff votes, when competition was tight.

WARNING: Some of the terms are not for the faint of heart.

WORD OF THE YEAR (2023)
* enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 68/92/158
babygirl: older male fictional character or celebrity seen as emotionally damaged, helpless, or vulnerable 10
ceasefire: rallying cry for those seeking a stoppage of hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 29
context: word invoked by presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn to questions at a House hearing about prohibiting speech on campus 45/63
(derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 43/73/121
girlie: lighthearted and affectionate term of address for young women (also used in a broader more gender-inclusive way) 20
Kenaissance: renaissance in the wake of the Barbie movie’s depiction of Ken (also Kenergy, Kenough) 14
let (someone) cook: allow a person to do something that they are good at without interference 14
stochastic parrot: large language model that can generate plausible synthetic text without having any understanding 37/52

MOST USEFUL/MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

* (derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 116

cunty: having an audaciously exceptional appearance or displaying fierce femininity (from LGBTQ ballroom culture) 26

enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 37

era: a personal period defined by a noteworthy style or behavior (esp. in in my X era) 30

girl/boy X: way of doing something associated with a gender, as in girl dinner, girl math, boy math 55

mother: (adj.) admirable (as a term of endearment); (v.) to perform something admirably (from LGBTQ ballroom culture) 16

POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR
* 🍉 (watermelon emoji): symbol of Palestinian solidarity used on social media 103/143
context: word invoked by presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn to questions at a House hearing about prohibiting speech on campus 61
hot labor summer/hot union summer: summer of 2023, when a number of unions went on strike 106/133
I/P: shorthand for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict 1

DIGITAL WORD OF THE YEAR
* enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 111
chat: collective term of address for those participating in a streamer’s chat 59
gamers: second-person plural term of address, as on a gaming livestream 11
ice cream so good: response by TikTok streamer Pinkydoll to receiving an ice cream emoji 11
millennial pause: pause by a millennial at the beginning of a recorded video, as opposed to the Gen Z shake (shaky video at the start of recording) 45
skibidi: nonsense word popularized by the YouTube animated series Skibidi Toilet 46

INFORMAL WORD OF THE YEAR
* let (someone) cook: allow a person to do something that they are good at without interference 90/142
babygirl: older male fictional character or celebrity seen as emotionally damaged, helpless, or vulnerable 39
(derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 75 /127
gyat, gyatt: exclamation expressing surprise, excitement, or admiration (esp. on seeing someone with a large butt) 12
rizz: charm or attractiveness, now used as a combining form or blend component (rizzler, pre-rizz-toric) 60

ACRONYM/INITIALISM OF THE YEAR (ad-hoc category)

* FAFO (fuck around and find out): warning that foolish actions will result in unwanted consequences 177

AITA (am I the asshole?): question asked to an online audience (as on Reddit) to determine if the person is at fault in a situation 47

IYKYK (if you know, you know): indication that something is a reference understood by a select group 14

LFG (let’s fucking go): exhortation to action 26

MOOP (matter out of place): waste material left behind at an event (esp. Burning Man) 12

AI-RELATED WORD THE YEAR (ad-hoc category)

* stochastic parrot: large language model that can generate plausible synthetic text without having any understanding 106/147

ChatGPT: name for OpenAI’s chatbot, now becoming generic for generative AI systems 111/130

hallucination: AI-generated response containing false information presented as factual 10

LLM (large language model): machine-learning model trained on a vast text corpus 6

prompt engineer: expert in developing text prompts for generative AI models 40

MOST CREATIVE WORD OF THE YEAR

* Kenaissance: renaissance in the wake of the Barbie movie’s depiction of Ken (also Kenergy, Kenough) 100/161

assholocene: the current era of human history, defined by the ubiquity of assholes 42

delulu: delusion, as in delulu is the solulu (delusion is the solution) 72/109

tush push: quarterback sneak for short yardage perfected by the Philadelphia Eagles (also called the brotherly shove) 64

EUPHEMISM OF THE YEAR

* structurally restrictive housing: solitary confinement (rebranded by the New York City Department of Correction) 101

artificial intelligence: computerized simulation of human intelligence that is not actually intelligent 60

effective altruism: movement ostensibly to benefit humanity, used as an excuse for spending other people’s money 57

free bird: alternative to “empty-nester” promoted by Gwyneth Paltrow 17

stenographer: journalist seen as uncritically reporting statements made by officials and others in power 22

References
American Dialect Society (ADS)
https://americandialect.org/
Zimmer, B. and L. Sutton. (Jan. 5, 2024). American Dialect Society selects “enshittification” as 2023 Word of the Year. Press Release American Dialect Society.
https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Terminology - The ADS 2023 WOTY.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On January 5, 2024, the venerable American Dialect Society (ADS) selected the term enshittification as the Word Of The Year (WOTY) 2023. The neologism was coined by Cory Doctorow, an award-winning, Canadian-British, science fiction author, and blogger, who uses the term quite liberally. According to Dictionary.com:

“Enshitification means the gradual degradation of an online platform or service's functionality, as part of a cycle in which the platform or service first offers benefits to users to attract them, then pursues more and more profits at the expense of users.”

However, the scope of the term is far greater, considering all of its derivations found on Doctorow’s blog, such as enshittocene, enshittifified, The Great Enshittening, and occasionally a more positive twist, such as to disenshittify.”

Three hundred members of the ADS voted for enshiffication. All of them experts in matters of language, language change and language variation, they are linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, students, and independent scholars. Members of the 134 year-old ADS institution, all voting in the 34^th year of the Word of the Year (WOTY) event.

Ben Zimmer, Word on the Street columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Chair of the ADS New Words Committee, presided over the WOTY session, on the occasion of the Society’s Annual Meeting. A session that he co-chaired, this year in conjunction with Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright, the Committee’s official Data Czarina and experimental sociolinguistic activist.

Zimmer notes, in regard to the selection, that: “Enshittification is a sadly apt term for how our online lives have become gradually degraded. From the time that it first appeared in Doctorow’s posts and articles, the word had all the markings of a successful neologism, being instantly memorable and adaptable to a variety of contexts.”

A sad word indeed, now the beacon of a whole year.

References

American Dialect Society (ADS)
https://americandialect.org/

ADS - 2023 Word of the Year is enshittification.
https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

ADS – All the Words of the Year, 1990 to present.
https://americandialect.org/woty/all-of-the-words-of-the-year-1990-to-present/

Cory Doctorow: An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse. YouTube video [01:08:42]
https://youtu.be/VT1ud0rAT7w

Dictionary.com (website)

www.dictionary.com

Doctorow, C. (Jan 13, 2024). Tech workers and gig workers need each other. Each disenshittifies the other.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Wright, K. E. (Jan 14, 2024). Disabling Linguistic Oppression with Experimental Sociolinguistics
https://kellywright5.wixsite.com/raciolinguistics

Zimmer, B. and L. Sutton (Jan. 5, 2024). American Dialect Society selects enshittification as 2023 Word of the Year. Press Release American Dialects Society.

https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

Zimmer, B. (Jan 14, 2024). Word on the Street columnist at The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/news/author/ben-zimmer

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Terminology: WOTTIES (2) – Merriam-Webster’s 2023 WOTY contenders.

Merriam-Webster identified 13 contenders for the 2023 Word of the Year (WOTY), all of them directly related to specific events occurring during the year. As a reminder, Merriam-Webster selects candidates for the Word of the Year by observing surges in look-up for a particular term in the dictionary. Surges in terms looked up are then easily correlated to events in the real world, subsuming the use of the identified terms.

Below, the list of the 13 contending terms for the 2023 WOTY, together with their Merriam-Webster definitions, as well as some of the stories assumed to have given rise to widespread use in 2023, in turn resulting in increased look-up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

1. rizz (noun): romantic appeal or charm; (verb): to charm or seduce, usually used with up. Slang appearing first in 2021, with possible origins as an abbreviation for the term ‘charisma’. The term was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in September 2023.
2. deepfake (noun): an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said. The term 'deepfake' spiked on several occasions in connection to fears that political campaign ads for the upcoming US presidential elections would run 'deepfakes'. Specifically, when 'deepfakes' were purported to run in Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign ads for Republican nomination.
3. coronation (noun): the act or occasion of crowning. The term 'coronation' spiked in May, when the new British monarch, King Charles III was crowned.
4. dystopian (adj.): of, relating to, or being an imagined world or society in which people lead dehumanized, fearful lives : relating to or characteristic of a ‘dystopia’. Merriam-Webster recorded several events that invoked the term 'dystopian future', prompting spikes in look-up. Among these events: the video produced by the Republican National Committee in early April, built entirely with AI-generated imagery, portraying a 'dystopian future', if the incumbent president were re-elected; and the 54th Earth Day celebration on April 22nd, following weeks of record-high temperatures, that came with warnings of a 'dystopian future'. A future that eerily manifested itself, in June, when smoke from Canadian wildfires spread across the eastern U.S., creating a 'dystopian landscape'. AI critics also repeatedly warned of a ‘dystopian future’ if machines were to subjugate or replace humans.
5. EGOT (acronym): the accomplishment of winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award in one's lifetime. The acronym EGOT (pronounced ‘EE-gaht’) spiked following the GRAMMY awards ceremony, in February 2023, when the actor Viola Davis, stated in her acceptance speech: “I just EGOT!”. She was awarded a GRAMMY for the best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording for her memoir, Finding Me.
6. X: not the 24^th letter of the alphabet; not the graphic representation of the number 10; not the abbreviation as in Xmas; not the mathematical symbol for multiplication; not the mark as in marked with an “x”, but the new name given to the Twitter platform, once the company was acquired by Elon Musk.
7. implode (verb): a: to burst inward, b: to undergo violent compression. Searches for the verb ‘to implode’ spiked in June 2023, when the submersible Titan lost contact with its support ship above the Ocean. The Titan was a sea vessel outfitted for expeditions to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, in the North Atlantic Ocean. The story made headlines because all five passengers on board this expedition of the Titan perished, when the vessel imploded at some point during its descent to the ocean floor.
8. doppelgänger (noun): double or alter ego. The term ‘doppelgänger’ apparently spiked in connection to two unrelated crime stories, one in New York and one Germany, where the victim involved a lookalike. In September also, Naomi Klein’s latest book Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World was released.
9. covenant (noun): a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement. Two events, in April and May, were put forward to explain the spike in look ups for the term ‘covenant’. In April, the release of Guy Ritchie’s film The Covenant, depicting the rescue of an Afghan interpreter who had saved the life of a U.S. soldier in combat. In May, a new novel by Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water, which became an instant bestseller.
10. indict (verb): to charge with a crime by the finding or presentment of a jury (such as a grand jury) in due form of law. The term ‘indict’ spiked by 9440% on March 30, when a New York City grand jury charged former president Donald Trump in a hush-money case—actually just one of four separate cases, where the former president was indicted.
11. elemental (adj.): relating to an element. Look-ups for the term 'elemental' spiked with the release of the Pixar motion picture titled Elemental. Specifically, the title referred to the original and oldest meaning of the term element as one of four 'elements'—air, water, fire, and earth—formerly believed to compose the physical universe.
12. kibbutz (noun): a communal farm or settlement in Israel. The term 'kibbutz' spiked in the aftermath of the massacre, perpetuated by terrorists in Israel, on Oct. 7th 2023.
13. deadname (noun): the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning. The term 'deadname' spiked within the context of the debates surrounding the Parental Bill of Rights, which was voted in House of Representatives, on March 24, 2023.

References

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Staff (Nov. 27, 2023). Merriam-Webster Word of the Year.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Terminology: WOTTIES (1) – ‘Authentic’ Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

The American Merriam-Webster Dictionary selected ‘authentic’ as the 2023 Word of the Year. A selection that "definitely wasn't picked by AI", according to the National Public Radio (NPR) journalist Emily Olson (Olson, Nov. 27, 2023). Indeed, Merriam-Webster traditionally selects the Word of the Year, based on significant spikes in the number of searches for a particular term in its 500,000-word corpus. Look-up spikes that generally directly correlate with events occurring in the world. Even if, in 2023, several spikes in 5-letter-word searches, related to the New York Times game WORDLE, had to be removed to avoid skewing computations.*

Nonetheless, it is hardly uncoincidental that searches for the term ‘authentic’ spiked compared to previous years, considering that one of the most exciting events in Artificial Intelligence also occurred this year. The fact of the matter is that the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT repeatedly passed the Turing Test of Artificial Intelligence—more than 70 years after the challenge was posed. A challenge misleadingly beaten, however, since it is far too easy to lose sight of the fact that beating the Turing Test only means fooling almost everyone on the planet into thinking they are communicating with a real human being,—or reading text produced by a human being—instead of a machine. A machine that, in this case, has been trained on a mega corpus to generate responses, based on very statistically probable word combinations.

Thus, with so much duplicity factored into the renewed hyperbolic excitement for AI, as Chomsky (2023) reminded us, no wonder that searches for the definition of the term ‘authentic’ surged. However, if you are still unconvinced about the necessary deceit of AI, then consider widespread concern for threats to identity in the era of 'deepfake' images and videos; celebrities such as Elon Musk calling for more ‘authenticity’ on social media, and the new French Social Media Platform “BeReal”, all of which Merriam-Webster also put forward as explanations for the observed surge in searches for the definition of the term ‘authentic’. Observations in Merriam-Webster dictionary look-up, which naturally resulted in the selection of ‘authentic’ as the 2023 WOTY.

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* The New York Times online game WORDLE sends approximately two million players worldwide searching for 5-letter words, every morning.

References
Chomsky, N. et al. (March 8, 2023). Noam Chomsky: The false promise of ChatGPT. NYTimes Guest Opinion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html
Olson, E. (Nov. 27, 2023). Merriam-Webster word of the year definitely wasn’t picked by AI.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/27/1215372795/merriam-webster-word-of-the-year-2023-authentic
Staff (Nov. 27, 2023). Word of the Year 2023: 'Authentic,' plus 'rizz,' 'deepfake,' 'coronation,' and other words that defined the year.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year
The Turing Test - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Terminology: WOTTIES (2) - The 2023 OED WOTY Shortlist and Finalists.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

In 2023, the selection of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Word of the Year (WOTY) was a three-step process. First, Oxford lexicographers and terminologists monitored and analyzed the 2.1 billion-word Oxford English Corpus (OEC) for trends. They looked for words and phrases that captured: “ethos, mood, or preoccupations of a particular year, and which have potential to provide a snapshot of social history through language”, alternatively that appear to “have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance”. A process that resulted in the selection of a Shortlist, comprising eight terms and phrases.

Secondly, the public was invited to vote for four 2023 WOTY contenders, out of the eight Shortlisted terms and phrases. Finally, the four WOTY contenders, designated the four 2023 WOTY Finalists, were submitted to a committee of expert Oxford terminologists and lexicographers for selection of the definitive 2023 Word of the Year.

Below, the eight Shortlisted terms and phrases, together with their definitions, four of which Shortlisted terms and phrases were voted contending Finalists, before submission to the committee of Oxford experts that selected the 2023 winner of them all: ‘rizz’. The contending Finalists (i.e., prompt, situationship and swiftie) appear starred. The expert-selected 2023 WOTY 'rizz', at the very end of the list, is underlined.

beige flag (noun). A character trait that indicates that a partner or potential partner is boring or lacks originality; (also) a trait or habit, esp. of a partner or potential partner, viewed as extremely characteristic, but not distinctly good or bad.
de-influencing (noun). The practice of discouraging people from buying particular products, or of encouraging people to reduce their consumption of material goods, esp. via social media.
heat dome (noun). A persistent high-pressure weather system over a particular geographic area, which traps a mass of hot air below it.
parasocial (adjective). Designating a relationship characterized by the one-sided, unreciprocated sense of intimacy felt by a viewer, fan, or follower for a well-known or prominent figure (typically a media celebrity), in which the follower or fan comes to feel (falsely) that they know the celebrity as a friend.

*prompt (noun). An instruction given to an artificial intelligence program, algorithm, etc., which determines or influences the content it generates.
*situationship (noun). A romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.

*swiftie (noun). An enthusiastic fan of the singer Taylor Swift.

rizz (noun). Style, charm or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.

References

Staff - Oxford Word of the Year 2023.

https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2023/

Staff (Nov. 27, 2023). Eight words go head-to-head for Oxford Word of the Year 2023

https://corp.oup.com/news/eight-words-go-head-to-head-for-oxford-word-of-the-year-2023/

Monday, December 25, 2023

Terminology: WOTTIES (1) - ‘RIZZ’ OED Word of the Year 2023.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) selected ‘rizz’ as the Word of the Year (WOTY). Rizz? Yes, ‘RIZZ’! A Generation Z word, short for 'charisma'. A term used widely online, and in social media, both as a verb (e.g., 'to rizz-up', meaning to woo or seduce someone), and as a noun (e.g., "rizz is all that it takes”).

The OED notes that the abbreviation ‘rizz’ is unusual in that it is extracted from the middle of the word 'charisma', like 'fridge' for 'refrigerator' or 'flu' for 'influenza'. ‘Rizz’ also acquired its own spelling in abbreviation, independently from the term 'charisma', marking the written form of the term as a neologism.

In June 2023, the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), containing 2.1 billion words, recorded a dramatic spike in the use of the term 'rizz’, following a 30-question Buzzfeed Interview with the British actor Tom Holland (aka Spiderman). Holland responded: “I have no rizz whatsoever” to the question: “What's the secret to your rizz?.” (Aniftos, 2023)

Selection of the OED WOTY is a carefully monitored process in the hands of Oxford terminologists and lexicographers, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (OEC) trends (Oxford Staff, Nov. 30, 2023). However, since 2022, the general public has been invited to participate in the selection of the OED WOTY.

Below, the OED definition of the term ‘rizz’, announced as the Word of the Year 2023, on December 4, 2023.

References

Aniftos, R. (June 15, 2023). Tom Holland Admits He Has ‘No Rizz,’ Is ‘Happy & In Love’ With Zendaya.

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/tom-holland-zendaya-celebrity-crush-1235355687/

Berglund Prytz, Y. and M. Wynne (Feb. 18, 2023). The Oxford English Corpus – lexicography and beyond.

https://digital.humanities.ox.ac.uk/oxford-english-corpus-lexicography-and-beyond

Buzzfeed 30-question Interview with Tom Holland (June 15, 2023).

https://youtu.be/2oDXBHIoqas

Staff - Oxford Word of the Year 2023.

https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2023/

Staff (Nov. 30, 2023). What does Oxford Word of the Year mean to us?

https://corp.oup.com/feature/what-does-oxford-word-of-the-year-mean-to-us/

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Terminology: WOTTIES 2023 (2) - Contenders for the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year.

Word of the year (WOTY) contenders are just as interesting as the 'winner of them all'. Below, the list of the nine terms that competed for the 2023 Collins Dictionary WOTY, together with their definitions and illustrations (GIF or JPEG).

1. de-influencing: (noun)