The website Dictionary.com has named its word of the year for 2022: woman.
In a statement, the website said: “Our selection of woman … reflects how the intersection of gender, identity and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary.”
It also said: “Searches for the word woman on Dictionary.com spiked significantly multiple times in relation to separate high-profile events, including the moment when a question about the very definition of the word was posed on the national stage.”
That was a reference to a supreme court confirmation hearing in March, when the nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked by Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, to define the word woman.
Jackson said: “No I can’t.”
Soon after, Jackson became the first Black woman confirmed to the court.
Searches for woman increased by 1,400% after the hearing, Dictionary.com said, the highest spike for the word this year.
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of woman is “an adult female person”.
Other key moments that led to the word being chosen included the supreme court voting to overturn Roe v Wade and thereby revoke the constitutional right to abortion; the death of Queen Elizabeth II; tennis player Serena William’s retirement announcement; freedom protests led by women in Iran; and more.
Referring to the supreme court abortion decision, Dictionary.com said: “Unsurprisingly, it resulted in both polarization and galvanization. That dynamic played out in November’s midterm elections, which upended trends and expectations.
“The outcome has been attributed in part to an electorate, and particularly women, voting in reaction to the Dobbs ruling. The election also added to the ranks of the nation’s women governors, resulting in what will be a record number of women – 12 – serving as governors in 2023.”
Dictionary.com’s senior director of editorial, John Kelly, said that to qualify as word of the year, a word must see “a significant increase in searches” and “capture the major cultural themes and trends in language” for the 12 months in question.
In 2022, shortlisted words included inflation, quiet quitting, democracy, the Ukraine flag emoji and Wordle – the last a popular word game bought by the New York Times.
In 2021, Dictionary.com named allyship as its word of the year. Previous words of the year were pandemic (2020), existential (2019), misinformation (2018), complicit (2017), xenophobia (2016), identity (2015), exposure (2014), privacy (2013), bluster (2012), tergiversate (2011), and change (2010).
