The Oxford word of the year will be voted for by the public for the first time, it has been announced. Since “the true arbiters of language” are “people around the world”, Oxford Languages has decided to put the final decision on the 2022 word in the hands of the English-speaking public.
Voting is now open online, and over the next two weeks English speakers can cast their vote, choosing from three words selected by Oxford University Press (OUP)’s lexicographers, each of which is believed to capture “the mood and ethos of the last year in its own way”. The shortlisted words are “goblin mode”, a slang term that refers to behaviour that is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”; “#IStandWith”, a hashtag used to express solidarity online; and “metaverse”, a term coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science-fiction novel Snow Crash to refer to a virtual reality environment, which has seen a dramatic growth in usage over the past year.
