Merriam-Webster declares ‘polarization’ the 2024 word of the year. Arts and Culture News
Polarization, a word that describes the division of two completely different opposites, is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Word of the Year.
“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” Peter Sokolowski, editor of Merriam-Webster, said before Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means we are moving toward the extremes rather than the center.”
In American English this term is called “polarization”.
The results of the 2024 presidential election in the United States shocked the country and sent shockwaves around the world – or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask.
The election, in which Republican Donald Trump won another White House term, was so divisive that many American voters went to the polls with the feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation.
According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about eight in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Trump’s views — but not Harris’s — were too extreme, while about seven in 10 Trump’s Voters felt the same way about the Democrats. Vice President.
The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarization” shows scientific and metaphorical definitions. It is commonly used to “create strong disagreement between opposing factions or groups.”
The scientific definition is related to radiation and magnetism.
Merriam-Webster, an American dictionary that logs 100 million page views per month on its website, chooses its word of the year based on data tracking growth in searches and usage.
The Merriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2024 is ‘polarization’.
Almost half of you may have problems with this. https://t.co/8MkJtwOgu6
– Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) 9 December 2024
The 2023 selection was “canonical”. It was chosen because a large part of America was struggling to reach a consensus on what was real.
“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everyone,” Sokolowski told the Associated Press news agency.
“In the age of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in culture, it’s a kind of backstop for meaning.”
It’s notable that “polarization” originated in the early 1800s — not during the Renaissance, as was the case with most words of Latin origin about science, Sokolowski said. He called it “very young words”.
“Polarization” extends beyond political meanings. It is used to highlight new cracks and deep cracks in pop culture, tech trends, and other industries.
All the scrutiny over Taylor Swift’s private jet use? Polarization. Feud between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Polarization. A Cambridge scholar’s PhD thesis on the “politics of smell”? You guessed it: polarization.
However, paradoxically, people tend to see eye to eye on the word itself. Sokolowski cited its frequent use among people across the political spectrum, including commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
“It’s used by both sides,” he said, “and to put the term in a slightly sarcastic twist, it’s something that everyone really agrees on.”
To summarize some of this year’s top words:
reluctant
TikToker Jules LeBron’s 38-second video describing her weekday makeup routine as “very demure, very careful” filled the summer with memes. The video has been viewed more than 50 million times, causing a “huge increase” in lookups, Sokolowski said, and leading many people to learn what it means to be reserved or modest.
fortnight
Rapper Post Malone in Taylor Swift’s song Fortnite undoubtedly inspired many searches for this word meaning two weeks. “Music can still send people to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said.
totality
The solar eclipse in April inspired fear and much travel. Millions of people lived along a narrow stretch from Mexico’s Pacific coast to eastern Canada, also known as the path of totality, where locals and travelers looked to the sky to see the moon completely cover the sun. Generally, the term refers to a sum or total amount – or totality.
to resonate
“There is a disproportionate percentage of uses of the word ‘resonate’ in texts developed by AI,” Sokolowski said. This may be because the word, which means to influence or attract someone in a personal or emotional way, can add gravitas to writing. But artificial intelligence “also betrays itself into being a robot because it is using that term too much”.
alliance
The word was seen 60 times more than usual when, in March, a plane crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. “When you have a moving object collide with a stationary object, it’s an alliance, not a collision. “You’re showing that one of the two objects that was struck was not actually in motion,” Sokolowski said.
Strange
On the TV news show Morning Joe this summer, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called Republican leaders “weird.” This may have launched his national career and made him the Democratic vice presidential nominee. However this is a word that people commonly spell incorrectly – is it “EI” or “IE”? — and discover that reason, the increase in use was remarkable, Sokolowski said.
cognitive
Whether the term is used to describe President Joe Biden’s debate performance or to raise questions about Trump’s age, it comes up frequently. It refers to conscious intellectual activity – such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering.
