NEW YORK (AP) — A nation, a workplace, an ethnicity,
a passion, an out sized personality.
The people who comprise these things, who
fawn or rail against them, are behind Merriam-Webster's 2014 word of the year:
culture.
The word joins Oxford Dictionaries'
"vape," a darling of the e-cigarette movement, and
"exposure," declared the year's winner at Dictionary.com during a time of tragedy and fear due to Ebola.
Merriam-Webster based its pick and nine runners-up
on significant increases in lookups this year over last
on Merriam-Webster.com, along with notable, often culture-driven — if you
will — spikes of concentrated interest.
In the No. 2 spot is "nostalgia," during a
year of big 50th anniversaries pegged to 1964: the start of the free speech
movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the birth of the Ford Mustang
and the British Invasion heralded by the landing of the Beatles on U.S. soil
for the first time.
Nostalgia was followed by insidious, legacy,
feminism and a rare multiword phrase that can be looked up in total, in a
foreign language at that: the French "je ne sais quoi."
The Springfield, Massachusetts-based dictionary
giant filters out perennial favorites when picking word of the year, but does
that formula leave them chasing language fads?
"We're simply using the word culture more
frequently," said Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster.
"It may be a fad. It may not. It may simply be evolution."
Sokolowski noted that the reasons words are looked
up aren't just about not knowing what they mean. Sometimes, he said, we seek
inspiration or a way to check in on ourselves. Of more than 100 million lookups
on the website each month and a similar number on the company's app, culture
enjoyed a 15 percent year-over-year increase.
Percentage-wise, it doesn't sound like much, but the
raw number in that stratosphere is large, Sokolowski said. He wouldn't disclose
actual numbers, though, citing the proprietary nature of that data for a
company still privately held.
Sokolowski is a lexicographer, not a mind reader, so
his observations about why any single word takes off in terms of lookups is
well-informed but theoretical.
"The word culture's got a cultural story. We
have noticed for years that culture has a cyclical spike every year at around
Labor Day.
That is to say back to school time during the month of September, so
we've been watching this word spike at that time for years," he said by
telephone from Springfield. "In recent years we've seen similar spikes at
the end of semesters during finals."
No comments:
Post a Comment