NEW YORK In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is authentic.
Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. Lookups for the word are routinely heavy on the dictionary companys site but were boosted to new heights throughout the year, editor at large Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.
We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity, he said ahead of Mondays announcement of this years word. What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.
Sokolowski and his team dont delve into the reasons people head for dictionaries and websites in search of specific words. Rather, they chase the data on lookup spikes and world events that correlate. This time around, there was no particularly huge boost at any given time but a constancy to the increased interest in authentic.
This was the year of artificial intelligence, for sure, but also a moment when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI suffered a leadership crisis. Taylor Swift and Prince Harry chased after authenticity in their words and deeds. Musk himself, at Februarys World Government Summit in Dubai, urged the heads of companies, politicians, ministers and other leaders to speak authentically on social media by running their own accounts.
Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We dont always trust what we see anymore, Sokolowski said. We sometimes dont believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.
Merriam-Websters entry for authentic is busy with meaning.
Theres not false or imitation: real, actual, as in an authentic cockney accent. Theres true to ones own personality, spirit or character. Theres worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact. Theres made or done the same way as an original. And, perhaps the most telling, theres conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.
Authentic follows 2022s choice of gaslighting. And 2023 marks Merriam-Websters 20th anniversary choosing a top word.
The companys data crunchers filter out evergreen words like love and affect vs. effect that are always high in lookups among the 500,000 words it defines online. This year, the wordsmiths also filtered out numerous five-letter words because Wordle and Quordle players clearly use the companys site in search of them as they play the daily games, Sokolowski said.
Sokolowski, a lexicologist, and his colleagues have a bevy of runners-up for word of the year that also attracted unusual traffic. They include X (lookups spiked in July after Musks rebranding of Twitter), EGOT (there was a boost in February when Viola Davis achieved that rare quadruple-award status with a Grammy) and Elemental, the title of a new Pixar film that had lookups jumping in June.
Rounding out the companys top words of 2023, in no particular order:
RIZZ: It’s slang for romantic appeal or charm” and seemingly short for charisma. Merriam-Webster added the word to its online dictionary in September and it’s been among the top lookups since, Sokolowski said.
KIBBUTZ: There was a massive spike in lookups for a communal farm or settlement in Israel afterHamas militants attacked several near the Gaza Stripon Oct. 7. The first kibbutz was founded circa 1909 in what is today Israel.
IMPLODE: The June 18implosion of the Titan submersibleon a commercial expedition to explore the Titanic wreckage sent lookups soaring for this word, meaning to burst inward. It was a story that completely occupied the world, Sokolowski said.
DEADNAME: Interest was high in what Merriam-Webster defines as the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning. Lookups followed anonslaught of legislationaimed atcurtailing LGBTQ+ rightsaround the country.
DOPPELGANGER: Sokolowski calls this a word lover’s word. Merriam-Webster defines it as a double, an alter ego or a ghostly counterpart. It derives from German folklore. Interest in the word surroundedNaomi Klein’s latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, released this year. She uses her own experience of often being confused with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf as a springboard into a broader narrative on the crazy times we’re all living in.
CORONATION:King Charles IIIhad one on May 6, sending lookups for the word soaring 15,681% over the year before, Sokolowski said. Merriam-Webster defines it as the act or occasion of crowning.
DEEPFAKE: The dictionary company’s definition is animage or recordingthat has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said. Interest spiked after Musks lawyers in a Tesla lawsuit said he is often the subject of deepfake videos and again after the likeness of Ryan Reynolds appeared in a fake, AI-generated Tesla ad.
DYSTOPIAN:Climate chaosbrought on interest in the word. So did books, movies and TV fare intended to entertain. It’s unusual to me to see a word that is used in both contexts, Sokolowski said.
COVENANT: Lookups for the word meaning a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement swelled on March 27, after a deadly mass shooting atThe Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter was a former student killed by police after killing three students and three adults.
Interest also spiked with this year’s release ofGuy Ritchie’s The Covenantand Abraham Verghese’s long-awaited new novel, The Covenant of Water, whichOprah Winfrey chose as a book club pick.
More recently, soon afterU.S. Rep. Mike Johnsonascended to House speaker, a 2022 interview with the Louisiana congressman recirculated. He discussed how his teen son was then his accountability partner on Covenant Eyes, software that tracks browser history and sends reports to each partner when porn or other potentially objectionable sites are viewed.
INDICT: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted onfelony charges in four criminal casesin New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C., in addition tofighting a lawsuitthat threatens his real estate empire.
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