The Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022 is “permacrisis”. As accolades go, the managing director of Collins Learning, Alex Beecroft, has said that this one “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people”.
The word, most widely understood as a portmanteau of “permanent” and “crisis”, has been in use for a little longer. In April 2021, policy analysts in Europe saw it as defining the era in which we live. Some in Britain inevitably ascribe the genesis of that era to Brexit. Others point to the pandemic. For others still, it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that made the word indispensable. As the writer David Shariatmadari has put it:
“Permacrisis” is a term that perfectly embodies the dizzying sense of lurching from one unprecedented event to another, as we wonder bleakly what new horrors might be around the corner.
