2014: The year of _______

Plenty of noteworthy things happened in 2014. We launched a spacecraft onto a comet. Hackers breached Sony's network and threatened 9/11-style terrorist attacks. And Kim Kardashian's butt got all kinds of attention but did not, in fact, break the internet.

If you had to sum up 2014 in a single word or phrase, what would you say? It's hard to represent an entire year's events in a single word!

Still, it's fun to see what critics thought defined the past year. So, without further ado, here's a list of some of the words and phrases that encompass 2014.

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2014 was...

• The year of concentrating solar power
• The year of outrage
• The year of the pizza
• The year of Taylor Swift
• The year of pop becoming a soap opera
• The year of the selfie
• The year of the hashtag
• The year of iBeacons
• The year of the hack
• The year of the bob
• The year of the braid
• The year of Chris Pratt
• The year of the superheroine
• The year of the female comic fan
• The year of brave, inspiring, young feminists
• The year of women
• The year advertisers broke 'feminism'
• The year of the liberal lie
• The year of Koch
• The year of Weird Al Yankovic
• The year of the DGAF teen
• The year of the heckler
• The year of health and fitness apps
• The year of disruption to traditional business
• The year of commodities

And, of course:

Respect.