It’s “word of the year” time, so I was hoping to offer you mine, but I appear to have only learned one new expression in 2024: zwizz de cachalot, sperm whale penis, in French-Canadian slang. It came from a TikTok of a woman explaining that the kraken legend might be attributable to sightings of “cachalot zwizzes”. I’m living evidence of why “brain rot” triumphed as this year’s Oxford University Press choice.
So, instead, I have chosen a word for lexical banishment: buddy. “I’ll refund that back on to your card, buddy,” a car rental operative said to my husband last weekend. My husband didn’t notice, or mind, but I found myself stiffening into full flared nostril, Countess of Grantham outrage. “How dare you, sir. My spouse is not your ‘buddy’!” (Obviously I didn’t actually say anything.)
Our dentist used to say it to my teenage sons and it made me similarly furious; I hate it. Why? Women never get “buddy” and I’m fine with – fond of! – “love”, “duck” and “hen”. But between men, “buddy” feels faux-matey, not actually friendly. Even when not intended rudely (and, mostly, it isn’t), it comes across as excessively muscular, like a too-firm handshake. I sense an edge of condescension and an unspoken challenge.
Am I being oversensitive about something ostensibly friendly? I tried to work it out through the traditional medium of Googling “Is buddy rude?” Apparently, it might be derived from “butty”, a 19th-century coalminers’ term for a co-worker, or a childish version of “brother”, which seems innocuous. But is it used offensively now? People online wonder why it grates, at least, and an English teacher on YouTube calls it “not always friendly and hard to interpret”. One Scottish Redditer claimed that, on the east coast, it’s habitually deployed in the phrase: “A’right buddy, you needin’ yer teeth smashed in?”, which I find persuasive.
I also noticed that debates on the issue invariably resort to referencing a South Park meme in which characters argue by saying variations on “I’m not your buddy, friend,” at each other endlessly. Conclusion: it is rude and our brains are indeed rotted.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
