Every year, various dictionaries give us their word that they believe sums up the past 12 months.
The Oxford Dictionary introduced us to ‘goblin mode’, while Collins gave us ‘permacrisis.’
And now, Dictionary.com has announced its perhaps surprising choice for their word of the year: ‘woman’.
Searches for the word increased more than 1,400 percent in the last 12 months, and according to the website, the surge came after a confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who in April became the first Black woman to be confirmed as a US Supreme Court justice.
Specifically, the increase was triggered when she was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn to define the word woman.
During the hearing, Blackburn asked the Supreme Court nominee: ‘Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?’
‘I can’t,’ Jackson said.
‘You can’t?’ Blackburn asked.
‘Not in this context – I’m not a biologist,’ Jackson responded.
The surge was described as a ‘massive leap for such a common word.’
Other words that made the shortlist include: Ukraine flag emoji, inflation, quiet quitting, democracy and Wordle which was only added to the dictionary this year.
The prominence of ‘woman’ also coincided with several of the year’s key events, including the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the equal pay settlement reached by the U.S. Women’s soccer team, the retirement of tennis superstar Serena Williams, and the women-led protests in Iran.
In a press release, Dictionary.com said how the definition of the word can ‘directly impact lives.’
‘The prominence of the question and the attention it received, demonstrate how issues of transgender identity and rights are now frequently at the forefront of our national discourse,’ Dictionary.com wrote.
‘More than ever, we are all faced with questions about who gets to identify as a woman (or a man, or neither). The policies that these questions inform transcend the importance of any dictionary definition—they directly impact people’s lives.’
Nevertheless, Dictionary.com does not provide a range of definitions for ‘woman’ on its site.
‘An adult female person’ is the primary meaning listed.
However, in the statement Dictionary.com added: ‘But the dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman. The word belongs to each and every woman – however they define themselves.’
Meanwhile, Dara Sanderson, CEO, Dictionary.com said: ‘Every day at Dictionary.com, our team is documenting how language is changing, following the data and cultural roadmaps.
‘Our work culminates in an important selection, a word that defines a year and tells a deeper story. Perhaps no word is more relevant for those points than woman.’
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