A year ago, the lexicographic grandees at Oxford
Languages dutifully stuck out their arms and chose “vax” as the 2021 Word of
the Year.
But this year, the venerable publisher behind the Oxford
English Dictionary has — like the rest of us, apparently — gone full goblin
mode.
اضافة اعلان
“Goblin mode” — a slang term referring to “a type of
behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy,
typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations” — has been named
Oxford’s 2022 Word of the Year.
Yes, you read that right. After a landslide online popular
vote, an in-joke that surged to prominence thanks to a satirical viral tweet
involving an actress, a rapper and a doctored headline has been named 2022’s
One Word to Rule Them All.
“New words catch on when they capture our imagination, or
fill a hole with a word for a concept we need to express,” Katherine Connor
Martin, product director at Oxford Languages, said in a telephone interview.
“What ‘goblin mode’ tells me is it resonated with the feeling that the pandemic
is over, but we’re still grappling with it. Do we want to go back to the
notions of respectability of the pre-pandemic world?”
The Word of the Year is based on usage evidence drawn from
Oxford’s continually updated corpus of more than 19 billion words, gathered
from news sources across the English-speaking world. The selection, according
to Oxford, is meant “to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations” of the
preceding year, while also having “potential as a term of lasting cultural
significance.”
Normally, Oxford’s lexicographers assemble a list of words
that had a statistically relevant surge, then choose one. This year, they took
a more populist approach, announcing a shortlist of three — “goblin mode,”
“#IStandWith” and “metaverse” — and then throwing it to a two-week online
public vote.
“Having a group of people in Oxford choose it always felt
weirdly undemocratic,” Martin said. “And this year, when people are talking
about democracy as a thing that might be under threat, it didn’t feel like the
right approach.”
The inclusion of “goblin mode” drew some consternation, as
the Not Very Online went scrambling to Google. But for some, it was the clear
winner — or at least the lesser of three evils.
In a passionate appeal, website PC Gamer urged people to
“put aside our petty differences and vote for ‘goblin mode,’” if only to thwart
the milquetoast-y “#IStandWith” and the downright evil “metaverse.”
“Go vote for taking care of yourself and having joy in
rejection of society’s stifling norms,” the website urged. Because “the
metaverse that CEOs want to sell you is awful.”
The internet obeyed, delivering a whopping 93 percent of the
more than 340,000 votes cast to “goblin mode.” “Metaverse” was the runner-up,
with 4 percent.
The precise origins of “goblin mode” are murky. It popped up
on Twitter as early as 2009, according to Oxford, but it went viral last
spring, thanks to a satirical tweet featuring a fake news headline that quoted
actress Julia Fox saying that she and Kanye West broke up because he did not
like it when she “went goblin mode”. (Fox later posted a denial on Instagram
Stories, saying: “Just for the record, I have never used the phrase ‘goblin
mode.’”)
The phrase, Martin said, reflects the influence of the
language of gaming. “Goblin mode” may be new, but “beast mode,” she said, goes
back farther, with some tracing it to the 1988 Sega video game Altered Beast.
Other dictionary companies have gone with more conventional
choices. This year, Merriam-Webster chose “gaslighting” (based on a 1,740
percent surge in lookups on its website). Cambridge Dictionaries went with “homer,”
which was among the many five-letter words that surged this year thanks to
Wordle. (On May 5, when “homer” was the winning word, lookups — many presumably
by non-Americans — spiked to 65,000.)
Martin sheepishly acknowledged that, in Oxford’s contest, she
was #TeamMetaverse. “In some ways, that’s the boring, obvious one,” she said.
“But there are a lot of things about it that are interesting.”
For one, it originates in science fiction, in Neal
Stephenson’s 1992 novel, “Snow Crash.” And like “cyberspace,” which was coined
in 1982 by novelist William Gibson, it went “from science fiction to science
fact” with the flowering of the internet.
So far, the trajectory of “metaverse” is unclear. “Will it
become a thing that’s real? Or will it be a corny marketing term that nobody
uses?” Martin said.
Thanks, in part, to Facebook’s rebranding as Meta (and
staking its future on the metaverse), the prefix “meta” has already gone from
being a highbrow philosophical word to something corporate and, for many,
suspect. “Is the concept of people sitting around in goggles going to pollute
the concept of ironic self-referentiality?” Martin asked.
She cited usage expert Bryan Garner’s concept of “skunked
words” — words that have become unusable, because of disputed meanings or
problematic associations. “We wondered if that would happen to the verb ‘trump,’”
she said. “But it didn’t”.
As for “goblin mode,” it will surely enjoy another spike
thanks to the publicity around the Word of the Year. But — to use an adjective
added to the OED in June — is it now officially cringe?
Martin laughed. “Almost certainly.”
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