In 2003, Merriam-Webster kicked off the annual tradition of choosing a "word of the year," based on search volume on the dictionary publisher's website, which serves as an on-the-nose superlative of the current cultural landscape.
The first word chosen—"democracy"—aligned perfectly with where American heads were at during the start of the Iraq War and a George W. Bush presidency. Decades later, their latest pick is equally fitting when it comes to summarizing the headlines published during one of the tensest election years in history.
Beating out close contenders like "demure," "fortnight," "pander" and "weird," 2024 saw the widest number of Merriam-Webster.com users interested in one word above all — "polarization," defined as "division into two sharply distinct opposites … a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes," which seems about right.
“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”
Compared to the "word of the year" in 2023 — "authentic" — this year's pick reflects a year that ended with American voters aligning with Donald Trump in his campaign against Kamala Harris, but Sokolowski is letting the data speak for itself.
“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everybody,” Sokolowski said. “It’s a kind of backstop for meaning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in the culture.”
