‘It’s really hard to switch off’: the quest to find Australia’s Word of the Year

Have you ever wondered what dictionaries think of each other’s ‘Word of the Year’ picks, or are you normal?

When I visit the team at the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC), Senior Researcher Mark Gwynn has the Oxford shortlist open on his computer.

“I accidentally voted for ‘brainrot’,” he confesses. “I wanted to see the definition they had for it.”

Every year, the ANDC – which is based at The Australian National University – selects a word or expression that has gained prominence over the previous 12 months as its Word of the Year.

Director of the Centre, Dr Amanda Laugesen, says the ANDC prioritises Australian terms for Word of the Year.

“It can be hard to predict what will stand the test of time. Some of the Words of the Year will be ephemeral. Some of them you look back and think ‘who used that?’,” she says.

“And then others do establish themselves in the lexicon.” 

Supermarket slang

The 2024 Word of the Year is ‘Colesworth’, a portmanteau of Coles and Woolworths, Australia’s two largest supermarket chains.

The announcement is especially timely, with the government-ordered inquiry into the supermarket sector currently underway.

“Part of the reason we chose it is because it has a bit of a history,” Gwynn says. “It sums up people’s cynical view on these two supermarkets.”

He and Laugesen have managed to trace the word’s use all the way back to 1959, when it was included in the columns of Ross McKay Campbell, a journalist and humourist writing for the Australian Women’s Weekly.

“He used it a couple of times, but it didn’t take off,” Gwynn says. “Then there was a smattering of use here and there in the early 2000s. It took off big time this year.”

Wordfinders

So, how is the Word of the Year chosen?

“We keep a trends list,” Laugesen explains. “We’re always on the lookout for new words. It’s also a part of our research process for the Australian National Dictionary.

“Sometimes something is quite prominent in the media early in the year and drops right back out again, and then sometimes there is a word that really takes off and speaks to the zeitgeist.

“We want to see good evidence that, while a word may not be brand new, it’s definitely increased in use or it’s really speaking to a particular event or social trend.”

‘Breaking’, one of the words on the 2024 shortlist, burst into the public consciousness at the Paris Olympics following a memorable performance by Aussie competitor Rachael Gunn, better known as ‘Raygun’.

“There would be a lot of people who have probably heard of breakdancing but didn’t realise ‘breaking’ is the term used in competitions,” Gwynn says.

When the researchers considered the language Australians use when discussing the ongoing housing crisis, they detected the growing use of the term ‘YIMBY’ – an acronym for ‘yes in my backyard’ which evolved from a predecessor, ‘NIMBY’, meaning ‘not in my backyard’.

The other shortlisted words for 2024 were ‘climate trigger’ and ‘ute tax’, which also achieved prominence via national debate.

Laugesen says terms used by politicians often find their way into the public conversation, although some have more staying power than others.

“If a politician says something and it gets taken up and talked about, it can catch our attention,” she says.

“Scott Morrison’s ‘quiet Australian’ did that, whereas Barnaby Joyce’s ‘weatherboard and iron’ didn’t really work.”

A different kind of day job

When searching for words and their histories, Laugesen and Gwynn make use of resources ranging from the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to online communities such as Reddit.

Twitter was once a valuable resource for tracking words, especially slang and new words, but has become more difficult to use for this purpose, since its rebrand to ‘X’ and a decrease in users and functionality.

The team also appreciate word submissions from the public – while they may not end up on the Word of the Year shortlist, some do find their way into the national dictionary.

 “We can’t necessarily cover every area, so it’s great when people pick up something we might not have come across otherwise,” Gwynn says.

The researchers love their work but agree that it’s hardly a typical nine-to-five.

“It’s really hard to completely switch off,” Laugesen says. “I’ll be watching television and think ‘is that a new word? Is that Australian?’

“You do tend to always be looking out for new words.”