Zeitgeist in a word: Oxford's 2024 shortlist reflects a world in flux

Every year, as the calendar flips its final pages, a curious exercise plays out: Dictionaries across the world distil the chaos of 12 months into a single word. And no, it’s not just about plucking a buzzy term off trending hashtags or catchy headlines: The word of the year is meant to embody the collective mood — a linguistic mirror to our shifting priorities, anxieties, and obsessions.

 

Take “manifest”, Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024. A term with mystical undertones, manifest has reemerged as a modern mantra for success, fuelled by the affirmations of celebrities like pop star Dua Lipa and gymnastics icon Simone Biles. Searches for the word surged — 130,000 times — on Cambridge Dictionary’s website, as people flocked to decode its magic. According to lexicographers, the meaning of “to manifest” has morphed into something aspirational: “To use methods such as visualisation and affirmation to help you imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen.”

 

Then there’s “brat”, Collins Dictionary’s pick. Once a pejorative for a petulant child, this word has been rebranded with unapologetic swagger. Thanks to singer Charli XCX and Kamala Harris supporters during the US presidential race, brat, according to Collins, now signals a “confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.”

 

Of course, these linguistic coronations are far more complex than playing a jackpot of trendy terms. Behind the scenes, lexicographers and linguists embark on a process that’s part science, part art, and part cultural anthropology. 

 

Major players like Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Collins, and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) all have their own playbooks. The OED, for example, as of 2023, had a 22-billion-word database that helps researchers spot the most relevant words by monitoring patterns in language usage. Merriam-Webster, on the other hand, leans heavily on technology, tracking user searches online.

 

But two key criteria unite all of them: Frequency and significance.

 

It all starts with data — lots of it. Dictionary publishers use corpus linguistics, a term for analysing massive databases of text to track patterns and spikes in word usage via advanced algorithms. Think billions of words, scraped from newspapers, books, TV scripts, and yes, social media posts. If a word is popping up everywhere — be it in op-eds or Instagram captions — it earns a spot on the shortlist.

 

Yet the final decision isn’t left to cold, hard data. Enter lexicographers, language lovers with a sharp eye for cultural resonance. They sift through the findings, weighing not just how often a word has been used but also its cultural impact and its ability to resonate with the public: Is it capturing a moment, reflecting a movement, or even sparking a debate?

 

In 2019, the OED chose “climate emergency”, a phrase that signalled the urgency of environmental crises. In 2020, it was “pandemic” (Merriam-Webster) and “lockdown” (Collins) — words that needed no explanation but carried the weight of a global reckoning of fear, uncertainty, and dramatic reshaping of our everyday lives.

 

Sometimes, the chosen words become time capsules of our shifting reality. As technology continued to shape our world, words like “World Wide Web” (1995), “app” (2010), “#hashtag” (2012) and “selfie” (2013) emerged as symbols of the digital age. Cambridge’s 2023 pick was “hallucinate”, a term borrowed from the growing influence of generative AI. But the selection process isn’t without its controversies. Words are political creatures, as evidenced by Oxford’s 2016 selection of “post-truth”, or Collins’s 2017 pick, “fake news”. These terms didn’t just reflect the discourse — they helped shape it, for better or worse. They’re reminders that language can amplify divides just as easily as it bridges them.

 

As we barrel towards a generative AI-dominated future, the art of picking a word of the year will only get trickier. Sure, algorithms can analyse trends and predict linguistic shifts, but they can’t yet capture the nuance or cultural resonance that make a word truly meaningful. And that's why, human insight remains intrinsic to the process: A database might tell you a word is everywhere, but it takes a person to explain why it matters.

 

The shortlist for the Oxford Word of 2024 — lore, brain-rot, dynamic pricing, demure, slop, and romantasy — tells a story of a world in flux, from ticketing scandals to TikTok trends to fantasy-romance escapism. What’s your pick as a snapshot of who we are and where we are headed? Go, manifest!