We've been talking about words of the year for a month now. Oxford Dictionaries chose "selfie" as its word of the year; Merriam-Webster chose "science." "Twerk" got a lot of attention, but didn't manage to top any lists, though it did make Lake Superior State University's annual Banished Words List. The American Dialect Society waits until the year is completely finished before holding its vote for the word of the year, a lively event, now in its 24th year, that was held Friday. Here are some of the words that were up for discussion.
BECAUSE
Because won for Word of the Year, which might seem strange for a word that's been around for so long, but this year it "exploded with new grammatical possibilities in informal online use," says Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. "No longer does because have to be followed by of or a full clause. Now one often sees tersely worded rationales like 'because science' or 'because reasons.' You might not go to a party 'because tired.' As one supporter put it, because should be Word of the Year 'because useful!'"
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It won over a roomful of linguists who find the development of a whole new kind of sentence structure especially interesting. Because grammar!
ACC
Standing for "aggressive carbon-copy," as in when you CC the boss on an email in order to undermine the recipient. This was a contender for the "Most Useful" category, but because won there too.
CATFISH
This word for the practice of misrepresenting yourself online won for "Most Creative" over doge, the new meme that pairs funny phrases with pictures of a Shiba Inu dog, but only by six votes in a runoff.
