{"id":28615,"date":"2020-01-12T15:07:10","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/?p=28615"},"modified":"2020-01-12T15:07:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:07:10","slug":"word-of-the-decade-they-crowned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/word-of-the-decade-they-crowned\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Decade: Singular &#039;they&#039; crowned by American linguists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The singular pronoun &#8220;they&#8221; has been voted word of the decade by linguists in the United States of America, who said it embodied 2010 to 2020.<\/strong><br \/>\nAccording to the American linguists, \u201cthey\u201d was chosen as their Word of the Decade because of the growing use of third-person plural pronouns as a singular form to refer to people who identify their gender as neither entirely male nor entirely female.<br \/>\n<strong>The American Dialect Society also bestowed its word of the year honors on the increasingly common practice of introducing oneself in correspondence or socially by the set of pronouns one prefers to be called by declaring in an email.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Word of the Decade 2010-2019 is gender-neutral singular &quot;they&quot;! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/wordofthedecade?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#wordofthedecade<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/woty19?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#woty19<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; American Dialect Society (@americandialect) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/americandialect\/status\/1213258883512311813?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">January 4, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<strong>Ben Zimmer, a linguist, and lexicographer chaired the group as two awards were given out in New Orleans by about 350 members of the society at its annual meeting of academics, graduate students, and word lovers who voted by a show of hands, for the word of the decade.<\/strong><br \/>\nThe most popular pick for the Word of the Year is the pronoun &#8220;My,&#8221; a reflection of \u201chow the personal expression of gender identity has become an increasing part of our shared discourse,\u201d the society said in a statement announcing the outcome.<br \/>\nLinguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, scholars, and students comprise the 131-year-old ADS group.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Other Word of the Decade nominations<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>#BlackLivesMatter<\/strong>; the hashtag used to protest alleged disparities in police use of force against African Americans.<br \/>\n<strong>Climate change,<\/strong> reflecting increased interest in the impact of climate change.<br \/>\n<strong>#MeToo<\/strong>; the movement that has highlighted widespread patterns of sexual abuse and harassment that women have faced at the hands of men across many spheres of life, including business, politics, and entertainment.<br \/>\nNotably, the group was founded in 1889 and aimed at the study of the English language in North America, just like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/english-forward-2020-patience-community\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">English Forum<\/a> is aimed at enhancing the English language generally.<br \/>\n<strong>The group started selecting its \u201cWord of the Year\u201d in 1991 and since then has picked only two other Word of the Decade winners. Top choices were &#8220;Web&#8221; for the 1990s and \u201cGoogle\u201d as a verb for the 2000s.<\/strong><br \/>\nOther Word of the Year nominations for 2019 included:<br \/>\n<strong>Cancel;<\/strong> meaning to withdraw support from someone or something that is considered problematic or unacceptable, used in the phrase \u201ccancel culture.\u201d<br \/>\n<strong>Karen;<\/strong> the stereotype of a complaining, self-important, demanding white woman, typically a member of Generation X or \u201cGeneration Karen.\u201d<br \/>\n<strong>OK Boomer;<\/strong> described as a retort to someone older, typically a member of the Baby Boom generation, who expresses views that are out-of-touch or condescending to young people and their concerns.<br \/>\n<strong>Various group reactions<\/strong><br \/>\nThe declaration of &#8220;they\u201d as the Word of the Decade, has aroused joy and approval by multiple groups and individuals.<br \/>\n<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28616 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/159.65.134.245\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Word-of-the-Decade-300x291.jpg\" alt=\"Word of the Decade\" width=\"309\" height=\"299\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Popstar Sam Smith expressed his approval on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/samsmith\/status\/1172519872464662530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Flifestyle%2Fthey-voted-word-of-the-decade-american-linguist-group\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">social media<\/a>, noting that their preferred pronouns were \u201cthey\u201d and \u201cthem,\u201d an announcement inspired by a lifetime of being at war with my gender.<\/strong><br \/>\nPramila Jayapal spoke about her gender-nonconforming child while advocating for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/anti-lgbtq-core-values-spark-exits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LGBTQ<\/a> rights legislation during a House committee hearing in April, and historic Pride celebrations were commemorated in June.<br \/>\nIn related headlines, Merriam-Webster also recently declared \u201cthey\u201d as its 2019 Word of the Year. \u201cThey\u201d seized the top spot in the annual, data-driven list after receiving a 313-percent search increase on the dictionary publisher\u2019s website in comparison with 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The singular pronoun &#8220;they&#8221; has been voted word of the decade by linguists in the United States of America, who said it embodied 2010 to 2020. According to the American linguists, \u201cthey\u201d was chosen as their Word of the Decade because of the growing use of third-person plural pronouns as a singular form to refer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":28617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}