Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is the pronoun “they.”
Lexicographer Emily Brewster, a senior editor at the Springfield, Massachusetts-based dictionary, said the selection is driven by data.
Emily Brewster, Merriam-Webster: The word of the year must show significant frequency in lookups over the past 12 months, and it must have also seen a significant increase in lookups over the previous year.
Jill Kaufman, NEPR: And were there any times of the year there were peak lookups of the word "they"?
Yes. It's most often true that the word of the year also has a number of spikes throughout the year. So in January, Paris Fashion Week featured a nonbinary model and the word "they" saw a spike then.
In April, Pramila Jayapal, a congresswoman from Washington state, used the word "they" as the pronoun for her child during an Equality Act hearing, and the word "they" spiked after that.
So those are a number of times. And there are also, throughout the course of the year, periods where there were smaller spikes.
September often sees a spike with "they,” because people are talking about their pronouns in the start of the school year, going to colleges. People are increasingly, in recent years, explicitly identifying which pronouns they use.
When people go to the dictionary, they fully know what "they" means. So what are they looking for?
People, of course, are not a monolith. Some people go to the dictionary because they want to prove a point. They may say, "I use this particular non-binary 'they' and I want to show you that it is sanctioned by the dictionary." And then other people are... curious about whether or not it has been accepted by the dictionary.
Now, I should also note that we entered a new sense of “they” in September.
Could you give us that definition?
Yes. That new sense is: "used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary."
Is that the number one definition?
No, that I believe is sense 3-d. When you look up the entry for "they," the sense numbers are in historical order.
Sometimes we will put the senses in order of what is most common, and sometimes we will do them historically. In this case, it is actually both, because "they" is most commonly used to refer to more than one person or thing.
But "they" has been controversial for really about 200 years, in uses like, "No one has to go if they don't want to."
Just because "they" is in Merriam-Webster in this manner, does it mean that changes everybody's mind about how the word is taught, how it's used in media, in classrooms?
In truth, really, the dictionary is more a reflection of changes that have already taken place. We are not trying to be at the vanguard of language change. We reflect changes that have already become established in the language.
Okay, let it rip. What are the other words that are runner-ups for word of the year?
"Quid pro quo" and "impeach" are both words that were frequently looked up in 2019. Because people want to have a clearer understanding — the word "impeach" is sometimes thought to be about the ejection from office.
And just to make sure we do understand: the definition of impeach, according to Merriam-Webster?
"To charge with a crime or misdemeanor."
Alright, what are those other words?
"Egregious" was one, in October. This was a recent spike, when reports surfaced that a Boeing pilot had used the word in describing an issue with 737 MAX planes.
And — this is another unusual word to have spiked — the word "the” was looked up 500% more than it usually is, in August, when The Ohio State University filed a trademark application for the word "the" with the U.S. Patent Office. They did this because they wanted to protect their branding logos that emphasize the word "the" in the institution's name.
What do these words tell you about who is looking up words in Merriam-Webster?
Well, we know that an unusual instance of a word appearing in popular culture, or in the news, or in the news about an event — that will drive people to look up words. So we don't know who these individuals are. We just know that a word is being used in some interesting or unusual way, and many, many people want to know more about it.
