New Words 2023

Before we set out on the new year let’s take one last look at 2023. What do the new words of 2023 reveal?

There were of course many items to do with the environment but the big ones were climate ghetto, Pyroxene and doom loop. An unexpected one was the no-wash movement which advocates that we wash our clothes  considerably less often than we do at the moment.  It helps save water and it doesn’t do the clothes any harm as well.

Politics words followed the path of political events this year. There was the cost-of-living increase which might have produced a price-wage spiral (but didn’t) and The Great Reset which might have revolutionised the economy after COVID (but didn’t).  The housing crisis produced a YIMBY or two, the lack of tradies produced the skills passport designed to speed up job applications,  The failure of the VOICE introduced us to blak sovereignty.

Our reading followed a path through a number of new lits — up lit, hot-flush lit, quit lit.  We also discovered a liking for recovery memoir, and romantasy.

Business jargon included the step change (replacing the quantum leap) and power mapping.  Anyone who wasn’t laddering up really wasn’t serious.

Our main medical concerns are stilll COVID, obesity and back pain, so we have POTS (a symptom of long COVID) and obesogen (a chemical in food or medication that induces fat gain), and cognitive functional therapy (to deal with pain). Going back to school after COVID has been difficult for some children leading to an increase in school refusal. Things that we do to make ourselves feel better now encompass the buccal massage, salt therapy, snail mucin and the dopamenu. We are still conscious of the need to avoid drinking and driving so some of us have adopted the practice of tiger-striping.

Technology gave us the great new development of generative AI. We can hazily see that this is going to have a big impact on our future.  It will be good for some, not so good for others. Various jobs will disappear but on the other hand others like prompt engineering will suddenly appear.  And we may feel that we still have a need for human-generated journalism.

We are used to influencers on social media but now we have de-influencers.  There are some of us who prefer JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).  And we need to watch out for Munchausen by internet.

There was a nice set of colloquialisms for this year.  Fuck-off as an adjective, as in a fuck-off hamburger.  To be the drip is to be in the height of fashion. To be in one’s wheelhouse is to be in one’s comfort zone. To be delulu is to be insane.  And the expression not my circus, not my monkeys means ‘not my responsibility’.

My choice of Word of the Year for 2023 is generative AI.  When I overheard the staff at the bottleship discussing the use of generative AI to invent new cocktails, I thought that this was a good indicator of how far-reaching the effects of generative AI will be. They disapproved strongly.

So now, on to 2024.