Terminology - WOTTIES 2021 - NFT (non-fungible token) Collins' Word of the Year 2021

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Huh? According to Collins Dictionary, the rise of the term NFT, meaning “non-fungible token” was meteoric. Specifically, the term NFT was up 11,000% in the monitored 4.5 billion-word Collins corpus (Flood, 2021). So, what is an NFT?  The Collins Dictionary defines NFT as:

1. Abreviation for non-fungible token: a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.

2. Noun: an asset whose ownership is recorded by means of a non-fungible token (e.g., the artist sold the work as an NFT).

Thus, an NFT is a form of cryptocurrency, a unique registered unit of data, serving both to authenticate ownership of a particular asset or collectible and, as a corollary, to identify an associated unique piece of art or collectible, whether original or copy. The NFT asset might be a video, a photo, a song, a domain name, a game character, a virtual accessory or, actually, anything else. 

Because the certificate is “non-fungible”, meaning that the unit of data cannot be replaced or interchanged with an identical part or parts, the associated collectible or artwork also becomes unique.  According to Collins, the interesting aspect of the term NFT is its use in the art world, bringing together art, technology, and commerce, to resolve issues of authenticity and reproduction, while breaking out of the dominant crowd of new COVID-related terminology (Shariatmadari, 2021).

Presentation of the Collins Word of the Year (WOTY) is also special, because of the animated Collins GIFs that are always created to illustrate the WOTY, (and its competitors). Below, the Collins GIF for NFT, the Collins Dictionary WOTY 2021. The GIF shows an auction scene for the sale of NFT art. Notice that the bidders are also holding up bitcoin, ethereum, and zcoin cryptocurrency symbols, in the bidding process for NFT art.

Reference

Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
Staff (Nov. 24, 2021). The Collins Word of the Year is…. Collins Dictionary.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty
Flood, A. (Nov. 24, 2021) NFT beats cheugy to be Collins Word of the Year. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/24/nft-is-collins-dictionary-word-of-the-year
Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 24, 2021). Get your crypto at the ready: NFTs are big in 2021. Collins Dictionary Language Lovers Blog.
https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/get-your-crypto-at-the-ready-nfts-are-big-in-2021/