Every year I am unexpectedly ‘on trend’ as I peruse the previous 365 days ‘word of the year (WOTY)’ lists for literary inspiration in which to infiltrate my bog-standard level of conversational and written English.
Every year I remain unimpressed and, to no one's surprise, this year is no different with the linguistic runners and riders.
The 37,000 people, who patently had little better to do at the time, voted for the Oxford English Dictionary winner ‘brain rot’.
To me, the meaning of the term is rather sinister and dare I say it, comes from the ‘woke’ stable. It means the ‘supposed deterioration of a person’s mental state due to the overconsumption of material (particularly online content).’
In other words, it is not a term of endearment but one used by those who see themselves as morally superior which then leads them to portray their purported superiority by deriding those of differing opinion as ‘suffering’ from the brain rot affliction.
I have spent 50 years plus manifesting such scenarios in my head and take it from me, it doesn’t work - I am still not whiling away the days on a superyacht in the Med with Kate Moss, but I still live in hope…
The Economist also has a word of the year which, as you may have guessed is high-brow and demands some kind of explanation.
‘Kakistocracy’ is the word, and is arguably named after this, and previous chancellors who seem to have as much grasp of economic matters as Mr Tumble: ‘the rule of the worst.’
The Macquarie dictionary (no, me neither) arguably chose the most obscure, yet the most accurate, WOTY by plumping for ‘enshittification’ which means the gradual deterioration of a service or product.
For evidence as to just how deserving it is as word of the year we don’t have to look far whether it be the NHS, getting to see a dentist, customer service departments for businesses of all big corporations continuing in their blatant attempts to get us, the consumer, to do all their work for them and yes, I refer once more your honour to exhibit A: The self-service checkout.
But as we travel headlong into 2025, no matter how much we aim at affording a bougie (luxurious in lifestyle whilst remaining humble in character) existence, the truth is we aren’t at the end of the woke road yet and I give it another 12 months of brain rot before we finally see sense and I will raise a toast and say ‘word’ to that!
- Brett Ellis is a teacher.
