Situationship, beige flag, de-influencing: Eight words on shortlist for Oxford word of the year
Situationship', 'swiftie', 'beige flag' and 'de-influencing' are among the eight words on the shortlist for Oxford Word of the Year for 2023, officials said on Wednesday. According to officials at the Oxford University Press (OUP), the eight words will be opened up to head-to-head voting by the public with one winner emerging from each of those competitions, narrowing the field down to just four finalists.
Experts will then perform one last detailed analysis of the corpus data, taking into account the votes and public commentary on the finalists, and name the definitive word of the year for 2023.
The shortlist of eight words has been selected by the language experts at OUP.
They have examined the 19-billion-word corpus of spoken and written language data for words or expressions that have seen a spike in usage or that have been recently added to the language (neologisms), officials said.
While 'situationship' is a term used for a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established, 'beige flag' refers to a character trait that indicates that a partner or potential partner is boring or lacks originality.
'Swiftie' is an enthusiastic fan of the singer Taylor Swift while 'de-influencing' is the practice of discouraging people from buying particular products, or of encouraging people to reduce their consumption of material goods, via social media.
«Everyone has a role to play in how the English language evolves over time, which is why we wanted language lovers across the world to help us select the word that best reflected their experiences of 2022.
