Wiktionary:Votes/2023-11/Word of the Year

Voting on: Whether to choose a Word of the Year, a word that represents the events of the last year. The word of the year will be displayed somewhere on the main page for a few weeks in December and January. Anyone can nominate new words, and the word that garners the most votes will be selected. You can support multiple words.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
• Vote created: Ioaxxere (talk) 22:49, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/November § We should choose a Word of the Year

1. Support. Also, I'll take this time to comment that most of the nominations here don't really "represent" 2023. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:36, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

   @Ioaxxere if I understand the intent here correctly, it might be better to nominate generative artificial intelligence. generative by itself doesn't even list that sense today. Chernorizets (talk) 08:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

   @Chernorizets the relevant sense of generative is "having the power of generating, propagating, originating, or producing." Ioaxxere (talk) 03:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

2. Support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:46, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Support either generative or generative artificial intelligence, with a preference for the latter as it's clearer how it represents 2023. (Also, it would help if the nominators of other nominated terms indicate how they represent 2023. I'm scratching my head over transmedicalist and rizz, for example.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Support, but obviously the entry would need some work. This, that and the other (talk) 06:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
6. Support as a well-written article that's relevant to modern-day developments. MedK1 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
7. Oppose It's not very interesting to people who aren't into either high-level linguistics or computer science. It appears in the context of "generative AI," where it is the more honest of the two terms, but I think enshittification better captures "AI" for a broader audience. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
8. Weak support. lattermint (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
9. Support: Feels relevant to 2023. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 03:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Rationale: discussion of artificial intelligence. See (e.g.) https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=61238

1. Support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:47, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Support Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 20:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Strong oppose. Too broad, too simple. Why is "AI" being nominated and not "artificial intelligence"? I'd have weakly supported that. MedK1 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

   Because "AI" is a more common term than "artificial intelligence". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

   Of course it is more common; it can stand for thirty hundred different things after all. MedK1 (talk) 21:22, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

   We have 11 possibilities. Not sure how many instances are "articulatory index" or "air integration", but generally the point of a Word of the Year is to have a word that's popular. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

5. Support "AI" qua affix potentially the cyber- of 2023. Desirable in tech corp/product names. TLD registrations of .ai grew significantly this year. –Vuccala (talk) 19:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
6. Weak oppose It would further the idea that AI exists פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:10, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

1. Weak support as it's the first time I hear of this term. MedK1 (talk) 21:05, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Support I would also support greedflation on that note. — This unsigned comment was added by Kiril kovachev (talk • contribs) at 17:52, 11 December 2023 (UTC).

Rationale: ties into the rising tide of transphobia over the past year or so in the form of increasingly-strict restrictions on access to gender-affirming care.

1. Support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Strong oppose. This article doesn't have a single reference to it, not a single quotation, nothing. I feel it's not well-written enough to represent Wiktionary for this year. Maybe next year. MedK1 (talk) 21:05, 17 November 2023 (UTC) Oops, I misread this as a nomination of "transmedicalism"; my bad. MedK1 (talk) 21:21, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

   @MedK1 The state of the page shouldn't have any bearing on your vote- it can always be expanded if necessary. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

3. Strong oppose If you're trying to capture the intense transphobia of 2023, it would be better to describe the main people perpetrating it (far-right religious extremists and TERFs) rather than some self-hating trans women on the Internet. Transmedicalist is neither a new word, nor a particularly relevant one in 2023; it's not something people are generally arguing over when they talk about banning trans people from public places. It's an intracommunity dispute, aside from that. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:09, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Oppose per פֿינצטערניש. --沈澄心✉ 19:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
5. Oppose per פֿינצטערניש. MedK1 (talk) 15:56, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Weak support - since 2023 was the hottest year on record, I'd be in favor of nominating any word or expression that became more prominent because of that. I don't recall whether existential risk is one of those, though. Chernorizets (talk) 08:27, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

   @Chernorizets: climate emergency? — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw actually, yes! I think I'm seeing this term used more frequently now in news reporting and other forms of discourse on the subject. Chernorizets (talk) 23:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

   @Chernorizets I nominated it because it is used in an AI context as well as a climate-related one (see the citations). It's currently more associated with AI-related risks, though. Jberkel 09:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

3. Support Edward-Woodrow (talk) 13:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Weak oppose MedK1 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Weak support It's been appearing not only in the context of AI but also of Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, etc.. With that said, it isn't particularly interesting to me. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
6. Weak support. This is fine. lattermint (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Weak support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:47, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Support - as nominator, and in reference to the waves of layoffs late last year and early this year that have affected workers' mindsets in several industries. Chernorizets (talk) 08:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Support @12:15 --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:24, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Oh hey, I've seen this pop up as a relevant word for 2023 specifically in other websites. I'm not sure if this factoid makes me want to oppose or support this term, so I'm Abstaining. MedK1 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Weak oppose per MedK1. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 15:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
6. Support I've not heard this word much this year, but it's evocative of a feeling that many of us are increasingly feeling I'm sure. — This unsigned comment was added by Kiril kovachev (talk • contribs) at 17:54, 11 December 2023 (UTC).

1. Strong oppose Nothing about this makes me think it's pertinent to 2023 specifically. MedK1 (talk) 21:05, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Oppose Would have been better for 2020. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 15:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Rationale: peaked in popularity in 2023. @Lattermint: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67602699

1. Weak support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Support, especially if the announcement is written in slang popular in 2023. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:40, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Strong support. MedK1 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Weak support This feels more late-2022 to me. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Support It's a very relevant new word and a cool one, I think. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
6. Support as the nominator. lattermint (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
7. Support If we're to name an WotY this is the only acceptable option based on statistics. OUP choosing it doesn't diminish—if anything only strengthens—this. Nardog (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
8. Oppose. Never heard of it before. If it can be statistically determined that its use has risen in certain crevices of the internet, then those statistics speak for themselves, no need for a vote. Voltaigne (talk) 19:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
9. Weak oppose. It would make us look like we're copy-catting another dictionary (iykyk) that has nominated this word as WOTY. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:57, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
10. Support: Feels more unique to 2023 than other the nominations do. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 03:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Support @Nardog, Guitarmankev1 If you want an "empirically chosen" WOTY, this is the one. Coined in late 2022 and one of our most popular pages. This wasn't my first choice, but I'm going to nominate it in case you two would like to reconsider your votes. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Strong support My god, this is perfect for describing 2023. MedK1 (talk) 21:42, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Support for above reasons. CitationsFreak (talk) 22:32, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Support. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 01:20, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:32, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
6. Oppose Seems to have been engineered precisely to generate the kind of attention we'd be giving by picking it as the WotY rather than organically spread. Neither the idea ("platform decay") nor the form (attested earlier, just not in this sense) are new. Nardog (talk) 10:28, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

   Thank you for clearly identifying what it is that I dislike about this WOTY idea. Equinox ◑ 10:30, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

   Words of the year in dictionaries are not always new words. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:44, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

   What is your basis for claiming it "seems to have been engineered precisely to generate the kind of attention we'd be giving by picking it as the WotY"? I don't get that impression at all. It's a useful word that has exploded because it's useful and clever. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 12:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

   The only times I've encountered this were Doctorow explaining it. Nardog (talk) 23:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

7. Strong support It's a very funny word that very accurately describes what has been happening to the Internet in recent years. I'm constantly having to sift through pages of machine-translated blog spam when searching for Yiddish and Esperanto words, and every time, I think "enshittification." I just wonder how you'd say that in Yiddish (פֿאַרדרעקונג?) or Esperanto (merdigado? aĉigado?). פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
8. Support due to the relevance in 2023. lattermint (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
9. Support I disagree with Nardog. It's a very encapsulating word for what a lot of proprietary programs tend to do nowadays, e.g. Unity. --GareginRA (talk) 17:32, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
10. Oppose If we're modelling WOTY on how WOTD has been operating, this would violate the "No offensive words" principle. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:59, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Oppose Jewle V (talk) 08:24, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Oppose (for clarity, I mean I am opposing the WOTY idea, not opposing this Opposition section...) Equinox ◑ 13:59, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Oppose कालमैत्री (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
4. Oppose — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:34, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
5. Oppose Nardog (talk) 14:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
   • Prefer something that is more empirically based (spiked in pageviews, recently attested, etc.) and highlights the strengths of Wiktionary, in that it's descriptive, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international—not just a buzzword but something that differentiates us from the boring pile of commercial entities. There might be a way for this idea but self-selected nomination is not it. Nardog (talk) 07:41, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

     Do you have a proposal for what that term may be? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:51, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

     I'd nominate it if I did. There doesn't seem to be a handy way to extract pageview spikes or recent attestations among English lemmas (perhaps something for the Grease pit). That said, this suggests rizz might be a pretty good candidate.

     My point of comparison is -‍ussy, the American Dialect Society's choice last year. That was something out of left field that corporations would never choose, and it was chosen not because of some notable real-life event ("special military operation" was a runner-up) but because it was an interesting development from linguists' point of view. Collins has already chosen "AI" for this year. That's just predictable and boring. It wouldn't be a good advertisement for us if it weren't something commercial dictionaries wouldn't name the WotY (or even include). We wouldn't stand out if we just picked something everyone's heard a lot. Nardog (talk) 08:45, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

     Something everyone's has heard a lot => more pageviews.

     It sounds like there are various conflicting ideas of what a desirable WOTY should be: linguistically novel, unexpected, non-corporate, (non-)zeitgeisty, (non-)buzzwordy, etc, which are difficult to reduce to one single choice. Maybe that's why we won't have a WOTY in the end. Jberkel 09:55, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

     I agree that linguistic developments are really great candidates for WOTY. "-ussy" would be grand, but its article actually got deleted :(. MedK1 (talk) 21:15, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

     It would be good to try do some data analysis of the pageviews for 2023, maybe it'll surface something interesting, but I doubt it. Jberkel 08:15, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

6. Oppose Theknightwho (talk) 21:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
7. Oppose. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:19, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
8. Oppose per Equinox. 0DF (talk) 17:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
9. Oppose — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 12:09, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
10. Oppose along the same lines as Nardog, that if a WOTY is chosen then it should be by linguistic interest, rather than popular vote. Even though I roll my eyes when I hear -ussy, it is certainly a more interesting development linguistically than something like AI. A popularity contest means people could vote for uninteresting words solely based on their personal connection to them (e.g. Red Sox, Yankees) which also invites drama and all sorts of stuff like that. Let's stay an unbiased dictionary. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 19:42, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

    I agree, honestly we're missing out by not having a proper entry for -ussy. AG202 (talk) 15:40, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

11. Oppose We provide enough content. This should be marketing by itself. A word of the year could give the impression that we aren’t up to providing top-notch linguistic information, esteemed across years, at any day. Fay Freak (talk) 14:07, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
12. Weak oppose: (I was originally going to vote abstain, but in typing this I realized that it aligns more with an oppose vote.) I like the concept of WOTY, but I'm really not feeling these words at all; as I've stated before, relying on page views and choosing words that are flashy instead of linguistically interesting feels like we're aiming more for a press release for the entry creator instead of showing that we're a serious source of linguistic information. Nominating unfinished entries also adds to that sentiment, as even in our already-existing WOTD guidelines, we have more strict rules than we have here for WOTY (such as avoiding offensive/vulgar words if possible). (rizz, -ussy, & quiet quit would be my likely contenders if I had to choose) I also feel that the vote is a bit rushed and haphazardly made. Nonetheless, with more time and proper planning, I feel like this could be an amazing idea, but at its current state, I must oppose it. AG202 (talk) 14:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
13. Oppose. Svartava (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
14. Oppose I like the idea (and even nominated something), but it seems all a bit half-baked. Let's try again in 2024. – Jberkel 12:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
15. Oppose What Jberkel said. Megathonic (talk) 18:26, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
16. Oppose. I'm rather cool to the whole idea of choosing a WOTY. While this process is more open than (what I imagine to be) the in-house processes followed by various publishing companies, I don't think that a popular vote by Wiktionary editors who happen to vote is a particularly useful way to learn much about language in 2023. Cnilep (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

    Since many comments here state something along these lines ("I think it's a good idea in principle, but this particular process is flawed"), do you have recommendations on how we can do better in 2024 and have a successful Word of the Year? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:16, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

    I don't necessarily agree that it's a good idea in principle, nor do I think it is a bad idea in principle. I don't have any better process in mind, though. Cnilep (talk) 05:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

    Create objective criteria according to which candidates are generated (e.g. top n pageviews/spikes per month/quarter/year, plus recently coined/added/attested lemmas from a larger pool of the same ranking), then vote on the candidates. Testing to see what would have been the candidates in the past years and seeing if they yield desirable results should help us agree on the criteria. Nardog (talk) 16:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

17. Oppose Like everybody else here I like the idea but not the process. A vote early next year to establish a WOTY, followed a round of nominations and then a vote for the WOTY itself in Nov/Dec might make more sense. My main objections to this format are (a) nominations coming in at the same time as votes (b) if the majority of votes on this page are for words but the nays have the plurality (which I think is how it's shaping up right now), I don't know what will happen (c) I'm not sure what it means to vote against a word in this context (d) if generative were to win, what gets nominated, generative, or generative artificial intelligence, given how many of the votes for generative are conditional? (e) I just don't like any of these words--so in that sense this is a vote to "re-open nominations." Also, given that this is a straight vote, and so only regular wikt editors are ever going to see this, this might be better described as "Wiktionarians' word of the year" than "Wiktionary's word of the year" — This unsigned comment was added by Winthrop23 (talk • contribs).
18. Oppose per AG202 and Jberkel. The thought seems to be originating from some random hapazard idea. A better and more transparent process is needed, if ever there was a WOTY next year. – wpi (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
19. Oppose - that is, I support the proposition that a WOTY vote should be opposed. If a word has gained unusual salience in general usage in a given year, this could be determined objectively by corpus analysis. If the WOTY-vote idea is meant as some kind of zeitgeisty publicity-raising gimmick (as seems to be the case with most of these other lame Words-of-the-Year lists), then all the more reason to oppose. Voltaigne (talk) 19:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
20. Oppose ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 23:29, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Abstain @Ioaxxere well, what if we had a words of the year instead? Like, I do not dislike WOTY as a concept, but I feel like lots of publications that do it just always have the worst possible entries. Many have words which are obviously influenced by, or directly reference, a particular event—like the American Dialect Society's World Wide Web (1995), 9/11 (2001) and insurrection (2021). Like, I suppose these are technically "words", but that makes their list look more like Events of the Year. Even the word that I would support (and actually like) for WOTY, generative, I must admit I feel like it is kinda 'obvious' or bland to me; as in, the word itself is linguistically uninteresting and most readers will not care about its etymology, different senses, pronunciation etc. Admittedly, it is much better than AI (which I partly dislike for my previous point regarding events). Another thing we seem to nominate a lot are those slang TikTok tabloid teenmag-esque sector (err, not sure how to describe these, they are not exclusively 'young person slang' per se anymore) words like rizz, body count, goblin mode and -ussy—though for some reason I have never heard of that last one. Actually, this makes sense to me from the perspective that these might enter common vocabulary in the future, like LOL and 😂 has (both of which were numerous dictionaries' WOTY). But my problem with these are: what if it becomes more popular next year, or what if it dies and is forgotten as most slang is? In five years when we say "rizz", will anyone immediately think of 2023 specifically? So, I was thinking: instead of word of the year what if we did word*s* of the year? For instance, there could be categories like "verb of the year", "proper noun of the year" (for those event-based nominations I mentioned), "new word of the year" (for specifically newly-coined/emerged terms like rizz or body count), "most interesting word of the year" etc. Additionally, stuff like "prefix/suffix of the year" could probably allow us to describe the linguistic trends of a particular year regarding word formation, like the weird stuff that 4chan does or -ussy (still not sure what that is but it seems prominent). This way we can also have those linguistically boring but prominent entries (like generative) mixed in with really linguistically fascinating or unique entries as well as humorous ones. I low-key think this could clear up a lot of the problems that editors and I currently have with a WOTY.

   My overall motivation for this is because I really love the idea and concept of doing something on Wiktionary to commemorate the linguistics of every year. I think it can genuinely be of interest to readers if we do it right, and it would suck to miss this opportunity. Admittedly, I think we began this proposal for WOTY a bit too late into the year as well. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 20:34, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

2. Abstain per the above. I'd be happy to have a WOTY, but I agree that the choices dictionaries make tend to be underwhelming. Having multiple WOTYs would be better, as would taking more time to elaborate criteria. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Failed with 20 against votes. Denazz (talk) 13:57, 12 December 2023 (UTC)