Word of the Year

 This is 20th year since Merriam-Webster started publishing word of the year.

In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”

Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. 

“We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity, What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

The previous 20 word of the year were:

2003 democracy (noun) State governed by the people or by officials elected by the people.[

2004 blog (noun) Online journal where the writer presents a record of activities, thoughts, or beliefs.

2005 integrity (noun) Adherence to moral or ethic principles; incorruptibility.

2006 truthiness (noun) Truth coming from the gut, not books; preferring to believe what you wish to believe, rather than what is known to be true.

2007 w00t (interjection) Expressing joy.

2008 bailout (noun) A rescue from financial distress.

2009 admonish (verb) to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner.

2010 austerity (noun) Severity of manners or life; extreme rigor or strictness; harsh discipline.

2011 pragmatic (adjective) Practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.

2012 socialism (noun) Any of various economic and political philosophies that support social equality, collective decision-making, distribution of income based on contribution and public ownership of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.

capitalism (noun) A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.

2013 science (noun) Knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.

2014 culture (noun) The beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time.

2015 -ism (suffix) A suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine.

2016 surreal (adjective) Marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream.

2017 feminism (noun) The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

2018 justice (noun) The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.

2019 they (pronoun) Used to refer to a single person whose gender is intentionally not revealed, or —Used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary.

2020 pandemic (noun) An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.

2021 vaccine (noun) A preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease.

2022 gaslighting (noun) A psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator

2023 authentic (adjective) Not false or imitation: real, actual

It indeed is a surprise cause we had been discussing about this just last saturday.