2011 word of the year

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is a glimpse into the minds of Merriam-Webster’s readers: it’s determined by what words dictionary users have been searching. As the year winds down, we pull up our data and sort through the top lookups of the previous 12 months, putting aside perennial favorites like affect and effect, and zeroing in on the words that are significant for that particular year because of the frequency with which they were looked up compared to previous years. The top word of the year is one that has had multiple spikes in lookups, in addition to being more frequently looked up overall. The runners-up include others that were similarly popular throughout the year, as well as one-hit wonders—words that had sudden dramatic spikes in lookups because of some political, cultural, or natural event. What follows is a summary of the Words of the Year for the 2010s, with each year’s top word and one runner-up that our editors thought was especially significant. As a group, they tell us a lot about what was on our minds during the second decade of the 21st century.

Economic recovery from the Great Recession was the big story at the beginning of this decade. (Indeed, the Word of the Year for 2008, in the immediate shock of the crisis, was bailout, so economic concerns even surpassed a presidential race in terms of public interest in vocabulary.) For 2010, the Word of the Year was austerity, a term used both in the context of government spending during the recovery and in the context of household budgets under the strain of unemployment and underemployment. Like most technical, legal, and medical terms, austerity comes from Latin, in this case the root word means “harsh” or “severe.”

The word pragmatic seemed to catch the spirit of the times in 2011, at least in politics, where Congress passed measures to control the federal budget and President Obama oversaw explanations and rollout of the recently passed Affordable Care Act. Pragmatic has since become something of an evergreen word, one that we see high in our rankings on a consistent basis. Like many such words, it has classical roots and an abstract meaning.

During a presidential election year, it’s no surprise that terms from politics dominated the list in 2012. For the first and only time, we named two Words of the Year: socialism and capitalism. The two words showed such a close parallel rise in our statistics that it seems likely that many dictionary users looked them up sequentially in order to compare them.

Curiosity is often piqued by events in the news, but dictionary data often reflects what’s troublesome or complex about English, including abstract words that have broad and varied applications. Culture (more on that later) is one such word, and it has become a perennial evergreen on our lookup list. So has science, our Word of the Year for 2013. It was a year without a single big story like a presidential election or economic recession, and yet this word’s rise in our data accompanied a national discussion about big issues like faith in science, climate change, and Mars exploration, as well as more focused stories like identifying the DNA of Richard III and assessing the role of Malcolm Gladwell’s successful books in popularizing scientific research.

Our Word of the Year for 2014 was culture, a word that had annual spikes at back-to-school time (along with diversity and plagiarism), but was looked up much more frequently throughout the year. Culture conveys a kind of academic attention to systematic behavior and allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue, or group: we speak of a «culture of transparency» or «consumer culture.» Culture can be either very broad (as in «western culture» or “corporate culture”) or very specific (as in «postmodern culture» or «Mexican culture»).
It seemed that culture moved from the classroom syllabus to the conversation at large in 2014, appearing in headlines and analyses across a wide swath of topics.

In 2015, a group of 7 words all sharing the same suffix—-ism—were looked up with significant frequency, resulting in the choice of -ism itself as the Word for the Year. Socialism was the most looked up of the seven, as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ identification as a «democratic socialist» kept the word in the national conversation. The other six -ism words so prominent in the public’s consciousness were fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism, and terrorism.

The word surreal, defined as “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream,” was Merriam-Webster’s 2016 Word of the Year. Surreal is often looked up in moments of both tragedy and surprise, as people search for just the right word to bring order to abstract thoughts, emotions, or reactions. In 2016 lookups of the word followed the Brussels and Nice terror attacks, the Pulse shooting in Orlando, the coup attempt in Turkey, the Brexit vote, and the U.S. presidential election.

Feminism, defined in this dictionary as «the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes» and «organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests,» was the Word of the Year in 2017. Although feminism is frequently a top lookup, 2017 was a banner year for the word: from the Women’s Marches in January to the ongoing revelations that fueled the #MeToo movement, the word feminism was in the ether that year—and in the search bar of dictionary users.

The Word of the Year in 2018 was justice, a term at the center of many of our national debates that year—debates about racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice. The question of just what exactly we mean when we use the word justice was part of the discussion. Particular technical uses of justice were also prominent, as references to the Justice Department (often referred to simply as «Justice») were a constant in the news, and confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court justice had the nation’s attention.

The Word of the Year for 2019 was one of the most common words in the English language: they. Increasingly over the decade a subject of study and commentary, the pronoun they got an expanded definition in 2019—»used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary»—but lookups for the word had increased dramatically over the previous year before that addition was announced. When something so basic to a language as a personal pronoun takes on new meaning, the speakers of the language are going to notice—and they’re going to look to their dictionary for guidance.

American Dialect Society | Visual Thesaurus
The American Dialect Society has chosen “occupy” as the 2011 Word of the Year. “It has taken on new parts of speech (as an imperative verb: ‘Occupy!’ or as an attributive noun: ‘the Occupy movement’) and new meanings, related to the protest movement and its style of demonstrations,” Ben Zimmer, chair of the organization’s New Words Committee, told me. “It was also remarkable how the word itself contributed to the movement’s success.” Also considered for Word of the Year: “humblebrag,” an expression of false humility; “job creator,” a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers; and “FOMO,” an acronym for “fear of missing out,” which is anxiety created by the flood of information on social networking sites. You can read the full list after the jump. || Earlier: How the word “occupy” fueled the protests | Hashtags helped cement ‘occupy’ and ‘winning’ as memorable words of 2011

AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY VOTE TALLIES
The number after each nomination is the number of votes it received. Numbers separated by slash marks indicate a run-off. Voting totals for each category might not be identical because the number of voters might have changed for each category.

WORD OF THE YEAR

• occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 82/174, WINNER
• FOMO – acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being inundated by information on social media. 41/28
• the 99%, 99 percenters – those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters. 43/24
• humblebrag – expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter. 30
• job creator – a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers. 4

MOST USEFUL

• humblebrag – expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter. 87/121 WINNER
• occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 70/102
• FOMO – acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being inundated by information on social media. 25
• tablet – lightweight portable computer with a touchscreen to input data. 30

MOST CREATIVE

• Mellencamp – a woman who has aged out of being a “cougar” (after John Cougar Mellencamp). 103 WINNER
• bunga bunga – name for sex parties allegedly involving former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 21
• kardash – unit of measurement consisting of 72 days, after the short-lived marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries (coined by Weird Al Yankovic). 82
• put a bird on it – to add artistic flair to something, usu. used ironically or humorously. 23

MOST UNNECESSARY

• bi-winning – term used by Charlie Sheen to describe himself pridefully, dismissing accusations of being bipolar. 77/156 WINNER
• amazeballs – slang form for “amazing.” 82/85
• planking – posing for a photograph, esp. in a public place, with one’s body in a stiff, prone
• position, for circulation online. 13
• Qwikster: short-lived Netflix spinoff of its DVD rental sservice, separated from its streaming. 44

MOST OUTRAGEOUS

• assholocracy – rule by obnoxious multi-millionaires. 166 WINNER
• deather – one who doubts the official story of the killing of Osama bin Laden. 35
• botoxionist – a doctor who administers Botox injections. 1
• American Dialect Society: Words of the Year 3
• American Dialect Society 2011 Word of the Year Vote – 3

MOST EUPHEMISTIC

• job creator – a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers. 111 WINNER
• artisan, artisanal – faux-fancy term used to describe food and other products. 78
• regime alteration – alternative to “regime change” promoted by Obama administration in some Middle Eastern countries. 19
• sugar-coated Satan sandwich: something bad on the inside that looks good on the outside, as used by Missouri U.S Congressman Emanuel Cleaver. 1

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

• cloud – online space for the large-scale processing and storage of data. 155 WINNER
• Arab Spring – a series of popular uprisings in Middle Eastern countries against dictatorial regimes. 54
• tiger mom, tiger mother – an exceedingly strict parent (after Amy Chua’s memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”).

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

• brony – adult male fan of the “My Little Pony” cartoon franchise. 103 WINNER
• Tebowing – posing for photograph praying on one knee, after Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. 47
• 9-9-9 – tax plan proposed by Herman Cain (9% business tax, 9% personal income tax, 9% federal sales tax). 65

OCCUPY WORDS (new category)

• the 99%, 99 percenters – those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top
• moneymakers, the one-percenters. n-percenters, n-percent. 219 WINNER
• occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 17
• people’s mic, human microphone – method of amplifying a person’s speech by having surrounding people repeat it line by line 7
• twinkling – system of wiggly hand gestures to register approval or disapproval. 9