What’s the Word?

Who knew there was a word of the year?

As 2016 comes to a merciful end, people tend to look back on it. Some with regret, others with a sense of relief, and still others with an idea to take one more stab at making an impact and getting a mention on the news.

The folks at Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary chose the last option and decided on a “Word of the Year.” Apparently they’ve done it before, but this is apparently the first year I paid any attention to it. The word they chose is ‘surreal.’ The M-W people hinted at some political association with the word and recent events. Maybe. Previous words have been ‘selfie,’ ‘hashtag,’ ‘vape.’ Choosing ‘surreal’ seems sort of surreal somehow, so I guess it fits.

I wonder how close ‘deplorable’ came to being chosen. Or ‘safe place.’ But that’s two words, so I guess it is disqualified.

‘Millennial’ might have been a good choice, only because I saw a couple of funny videos this year about millennials that I enjoyed a lot. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with that word. Or with millennials, for that matter. 

The Oxford Dictionary people chose “post-truth” as their Word of the Year. The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

I wonder who gets paid to come up with a word of the year and how much. Nice work if you can get it.

Google compiled a top 10 questions for 2016:

1. What is Pokémon Go?
2. What is a Caucus?
3. What is Brexit?
4. What are electoral votes?
5. What is the Electoral College?
6. What is Aleppo?
7. What is the mannequin challenge?
8. What is the European Union?
9. What is Citizens United?
10. What is a Superdelegate?

I have asked Google “what is the meaning of life?” Google doesn’t know, and it didn’t make the top 10 questions for any year.

Maybe the question was too surreal.