"The site has been selecting a word of the year since 2010."
This year's word of the year has been selected.
With the help of climate change and a certain movie star called Forky, the word “existential” has been selected Dictionary.com’s word of the year. The choice reflects months of climate crises across the world throughout 2019.
John Kelly, senior research editor for Dictionary.com said:
“In our data, it speaks to this sense of grappling with our survival, both literally and figuratively, that defined so much of the discourse".
The word earned top searched in the aftermath of wildfires and Hurricane Dorian, and mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas. It also became famous from Forky the white plastic spork who was the breakout star of Toy Story 4.
“Forky underscores how this sense of grappling can also inspire us to ask big questions about who we are, about our purpose,” Mr Kelly said.
Dictionary.com uses search results and other data to decide which word to anoint each year and the site has been selecting a word of the year since 2010.
Meanwhile, Oxford Dictionaries picked “climate emergency” as its words of the year, saying that usage reflects the “ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year”.
