JENN McKINLAY: I'm sure my etymology professor from university would be shocked (perchance relieved?) to discover that I no longer find the study of words and their origins utterly boring. Eh, I was nineteen when I took that class and much more interested in my social calendar than my studies.
Anyway, as I've matured into a fully functional adult with a wordy profession, I have developed the habit of checking to see what rando word Merriam-Webster has chosen for their word of the year as well as the runner ups. Incidentally, "rando" is not one of them.
The MW word of the year is "authentic". I found this fascinating because during a recent conversation with a friend of mine, she told me she had been struggling with a toxic work associate, who everyone else seemed to adore. She couldn't understand why. My friend's therapist helped her see that what she was struggling with was the person's lack of authenticity. My friend could sense that the person was full of rubbish behind the winning smile, and she simply couldn't warm up to her.
I then applied this information to a few people that bug me for no explicable reason and lo and behold, yup, that was it. To me, they were very inauthentic sorts of people -- you know the type, the ones who shake your hand but are too busy looking past you to see if there's someone with more clout in the room. Ahem. And yet, everyone else seemed to adore them. I thought I was being petty but I realized, nope. They just weren't authentic...with me.
 |
| (MW Online Dictionary Screenshot) |
So naturally, I assumed MW picked this word because we're dealing with a world full of shallow people and MW was calling them out, but that wasn't entirely it. The word was actually chosen because as reported by PBS, the definition of authentic was increasingly searched for in 2023.
“We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, said in an exclusive interview given to The Associated Press. “What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”
I have to agree. Writers are now adding notes to their books declaring that they weren't written with the help of AI. As a writer and a reader, I can definitely see why authenticity has become a thing.
I did like some of their other highly searched runner up words:
Rizz -- Short for charisma. Cute! I like it!
Implode -- Because of the Titan submersible which captured the attention of the world after it devastatingly imploded.
Deepfake -- AI generated a phony ad of Ryan Reynolds pimping Tesla which caused this term to have a searchapalooza of its own. Along with authenticity, I'm seeing a theme...
What about you Reds and Readers, what do you think of authenticity as the word of the year? Do you agree or what would you have chosen instead?
