Lexis Episode 68 - Tony Thorne on the new words of 2024 & 2025
Show notes for Episode 68
Here are the show notes for Episode 68, in which Lisa, Jacky, Raj and Dan talk to lexicographer extraordinaire, connoisseur of coinages and expert slangster, Tony Thorne,Language consultant at King’s College London, about the words of 2024, those on his radar for 2025 and what new words tell us (or don’t) about the world we live in today.
We talk about:
The WOTY lists of 2024
Why WOTY generates interest and column inches
What didn’t make the cut
What’s driving lexical change
Why new words aren’t all about fun and frivolity
What the words that are bubbling under for 2025 tell us about the year that could be to come
As part of the discussion, we touch on some explicit language and themes of an adult and politically controversial nature.
Tony’s website:https://language-and-innovation.com/
Tony’s 2024 piece for The Conversation:https://theconversation.com/most-words-of-the-year-dont-actually-tell-us-about-the-state-of-the-world-heres-what-id-pick-instead-246190
And Tony’s 2023 piece:https://theconversation.com/im-an-expert-in-slang-here-are-my-picks-for-word-of-the-year-218286
We talk about words featured in some of the following articles:
Collins WOTY brat:https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty
Charli XCX's Brat crowned Collins Dictionary word of the year - BBC News
Telegraph on brat:http://archive.today/2024.11.01-074903/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/01/brat-collins-dictionary-charli-xcx-eras/
The Times on brat:http://archive.today/2024.11.01-004723/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/collins-word-of-the-year-brat-20m337nhc
Celebrities make ‘manifest’ appear as 2024 word of the year | Social media | The Guardian
2024 Word of the Year Is “Rawdog” - American Dialect Society
How did ‘rawdogging’ become part of polite conversation? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Dictionary Dot Com WOTYdemure:https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2024/
Macquarie WOTYenshittification:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/26/enshittification-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-explained
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/arts/brain-rot-oxford-word.html (alternative link:http://archive.today/2024.12.03-205352/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/arts/brain-rot-oxford-word.html )
OUP on Oxford WOTY:https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/
‘Brain rot’: Oxford word of the year 2024 reflects ‘trivial’ use of social media
Dan’s for Byline Times:https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of (alt link:http://archive.today/2024.12.06-210125/https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of )
Dan’s piece for Byline Times piece on ‘enshittification’:The Words That Define Our 'Enshittified' World alt link:http://archive.today/2024.11.16-094738/https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed
2024 Word of the Year | School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
Nancy Friedman:https://bsky.app/profile/fritinancy.bsky.social
Lexis is on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog:https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter:Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog:EngLangBlog & Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter:https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana & Matthew Butler
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive:https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys