馃攳
Word of the Year 2016 - Oxford Dictionaries - YouTube
Channel: unknown
[0]
Post-truth: British politics was
[8]
dominated this year by the Brexit
[10]
referendum. In America, it was the
[12]
presidential election. Both campaigns
[15]
caused spikes in the usage of the phrase
[16]
'post-truth' - that is, when objective facts
[20]
are less influential in shaping public
[21]
opinion than appeals to emotion and
[24]
personal belief. The phrase could now
[26]
take on an even wider importance. It
[29]
describes not just particular assertions
[31]
but a general characteristic of our age,
[33]
and its usage in 2016 has sat
[36]
overwhelmingly alongside just one other
[38]
noun, cementing the idea of 'post-truth politics'.
[41]
'The truth', lamented one British
[43]
newspaper commentator recently, 'has
[46]
become so devalued that what was once
[48]
the gold standard of political debate is
[50]
a worthless currency'. Brexiteer: just
[53]
a couple of years ago, the UK still had
[55]
'Eurosceptics': politicians who criticized
[58]
the European Union. Over the last year,
[61]
though, most of those have hardened into
[62]
Brexiteers, and they persuaded 17
[65]
million voters who chose 'leave' in
[67]
Britain's EU referendum to join them.
[70]
Nigel Farage, and his United Kingdom
[72]
Independence Party, have campaigned for
[74]
years around this one issue, but the
[77]
referendum's Brexiteers (that is, people
[79]
who want Britain to withdraw from the EU)
[81]
have come from across the political
[82]
spectrum. Like a mountaineer or an
[85]
auctioneer, a Brexiteer gets their
[87]
name from the objective they're trying
[88]
to achieve - and, with Brexit dominating
[91]
the Westminster agenda since June, that
[93]
objective has now come a big step closer.
[95]
Glass cliff: in 2003, The Times of London
[100]
published an article lamenting the
[102]
leadership of FTSE 100 companies by
[104]
female executives. 'The triumphant march
[107]
of women into the country's boardrooms
[108]
has wreaked havoc on company performance",
[111]
it said, but two academics then undertook
[114]
research that showed the exact opposite.
[116]
The appointment of senior female execs
[118]
tended, in fact, to be preceded by
[120]
consistently poor corporate performance.
[122]
The professors named this phenomenon, of
[125]
women and other minorities ascending to
[127]
leadership positions where the risk of
[128]
failure is high, the 'glass cliff.' In 2016,
[133]
as female politicians and business leaders
[134]
have faced daunting new roles, the phrase has gained
[137]
new resonance.
[139]
its popularity on Google, for example,
[140]
peaked in the weeks following the Brexit referendum.
[143]
Alt-right: this year's
[146]
seismic political events, especially in
[148]
the United States, have been impacted by
[150]
an insurgent force: the alt-right.
[152]
Extremely conservative and often
[155]
reactionary, the loud voices of the
[157]
alt-right fiercely reject mainstream
[159]
politics. On their blogs they
[161]
deliberately crank up controversy and,
[163]
through their provocative social media
[165]
feeds, they galvanized millions of
[167]
followers. Though its name dates back to
[169]
at least 2010, the rise of the alt-right's
[171]
voice (and therefore use of the
[173]
term) mushroomed in 2016. A few years ago,
[178]
alt-right was just a label for a small
[180]
band of online ideologues. Today, it is
[183]
bandied around on both sides of the
[184]
political spectrum - either as a defiant
[187]
banner or a derisive slur - and it signals
[189]
a further fractioning of the traditional
[191]
right-wing political block. Latinx: where
[195]
native English speakers start to learn
[196]
Spanish, they come up against a
[198]
linguistic difference that has no
[200]
English equivalent: Spanish nouns and
[202]
adjectives both have grammatical gender.
[204]
So, traditionally, a Latin American woman
[208]
is Latina, but her brother is Latino.
[212]
For Latin Americans who identify as trans,
[214]
or as having another non-traditional
[216]
gender identity,
[217]
this isn't just a linguistic hurdle, it's
[219]
inaccurate and excluding. During 2016
[222]
though, a gender-neutral alternative, Latinx,
[225]
has seen increased usage, especially
[228]
in the US. As The Huffington Post wrote
[231]
in July, 'In a year where discussions
[233]
about trans and non-binary identity
[235]
are at the forefront, it makes sense for
[237]
Latino to evolve'. Coulrophobia: it started
[241]
in South Carolina in August - a small boy
[244]
ran to his mother, saying that two scary
[246]
clowns who try to lure him into the
[248]
woods behind their apartment complex.
[249]
From there, creepy clown sightings have
[252]
spread across the globe to Australia,
[254]
Canada, and across the US. In the UK,
[257]
police in just one county - Kent - had 59
[260]
clown-related incidents in just three
[262]
days.
[263]
No wonder, then, that Internet searches have
[265]
spiked for 'coulrophobia',
[266]
the extreme or irrational fear of
[269]
clowns. Soon, though, the coulrophobics could
[272]
be having the last laugh - or, at least, the
[274]
last evil red grin: groups of clown
[277]
hunters organized on Facebook are
[279]
springing up worldwide, and where a scary
[281]
clown start to chase, they're chasing
[283]
right back.
[284]
Hygge: this year there's been an
[287]
increased amount of attention on a
[288]
Danish export: the cuddly concept of
[291]
hygge. With no direct translation in
[293]
English, hygge's definition is 'a quality
[296]
of cosiness and comfortable conviviality
[298]
that engenders a feeling of contentment
[300]
or wellbeing'. For example, according to
[304]
the BBC website, sitting by a fire on a
[307]
cold night, wearing a woolly jumper, or
[309]
drinking mulled wine.
[312]
Chatbot: have you ever phoned customer service,
[313]
only to get stuck in a hopeless mire of
[315]
automated options - press one for yes; two
[318]
for no? These days, you may well get a
[320]
better experience if you go online - and
[322]
that's why some technology commentators
[324]
called 2016 'the year of the chatbot'. The
[327]
chatbot is computer program that
[328]
simulates conversation with a human user,
[330]
especially over the Internet. Companies,
[333]
including Domino's Pizza, KLM, CNN,
[336]
deployed chatbots on the messaging
[338]
service Facebook Messenger this year,
[339]
after Facebook allowed chatbots onto
[341]
messenger for the first time in April.
[343]
Indeed, within just three months, over
[346]
11,000 chatbots had launched on the
[348]
platform.
[348]
No wonder, then, that chatbots have been
[350]
called 'the new apps'. Woke: as the news was
[353]
filled this year with violent acts of
[355]
bigotry and discrimination, many people
[358]
were revulsed into using the word 'woke' in
[360]
a new way. They want to make sure they
[362]
don't ever turn a blind eye to social
[364]
injustice, particularly racism; they want,
[367]
in other words, always to stay woke. In
[370]
African-American vernacular English, woke
[372]
has been used this way for decades.
[375]
In 2016, though, it's become a proud badge for
[378]
people of diverse nationalities and
[379]
ethnicities, as they too stand up against
[382]
prejudice. Adulting: if you're old enough
[385]
to be an adult, yet nonetheless forcing
[387]
yourself to behave like an adult, then
[390]
you are 'adulting'. Adulting, reported Time
[393]
Magazine in June, is a 'jokey way of
[396]
describing one's engagement in
[397]
adult behaviours, whether that is doing your own
[399]
taxes, staying in on a Friday, or getting
[402]
super pumped about home appliances'.
[405]
And newly grown up Millennials aren't the only
[407]
ones in flux: the word 'adult' itself has
[410]
also transitioned, from noun to verb, and
[412]
then back to this new noun - as in
[415]
'I'm taking a step back from adulting, and
[417]
letting someone else cook dinner'.
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage