Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
T’is the WOTY* season anew! The
Collins Dictionary lexicographers have just named Climate strike as WOTY 2019.
Climate strike, the winning Collins WOTY 2019, is defined variously as “a protest demanding
action on climate change”, or "a form of protest in which people absent themselves from education or work in order to join demonstrations demanding action to counter climate change." (Collins Word of the Year)
Although the term appeared in 2015, in connection
with the Paris UN Climate Change COP21 (Conference of the Parties), Collins
lexicographers registered a 100-fold increase of the term, in 2019. A surge in usage attributed to youth activism, led by the young 16-year old Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg.
Indeed,
since 2018, following Thunberg's intervention (Thunberg, 2018), at the UN Climate Change COP24 meeting, in Katowice, Poland, hundreds of youth-led climate strikes have taken place, in more
than 270 cities. Just this past Sept. 20th, 2019, on the occasion of the New York UN Climate Summit, youth strikes for
climate change were attended by an estimated 4 million people, around the globe, from Mumbai to Manhattan (Kaplan, et al., 2019).
Collins dictionary lexicographers select the WOTY based on close
observation of the Collins Corpus, a 4.5 billion word database, with a “huge
range of sources of spoken and written English, including newspapers, radio and
other types of media, from all over the world” (Collins Word Lover’s Blog). A database where public submissions of new
words are both welcome, and vetted, for inclusion. The sorts of
considerations that are part of the Collins Corpus monitoring process include:
frequency, breadth of usage, breadth of sources, and lifespan of the term. Terms
are rarely removed. They are indexed as obsolete
or archaic if they have dropped out
of use, and old fashioned if their
usage is dropping.
* WOTY is an acronym for “Word of the Year”. It rhymes with “potty”.
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© Collins Dictionaries
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Reference
Collins Word of the Year (portal) – The Collins Word of the Year is ….
Collins Word Lover’s blog
Collins Word Lover’s blog–Nov. 2, 2016 – Collins Dictionaries - Collins Word of the Year 2016 Q & A
Collins Word Lover’s blog–Nov.7 2019 - David Shariatmadar - These are strange, anxiety-inducing times – but there are reasons to be
cheerful.
Kaplan, S., Lumpkin, L., and B. Dennis (Sept. 20, 2019) We will make them hear us: Millions of youth around the word strike for actionhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/20/millions-youth-around-world-are-striking-friday-climate-action/
Thunberg, G. (2018) Full Speeh at UN Climate Change COP24 Meeting, in Katowice, Poland.
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