The word of the year has been unveiled as ‘surreal’.
Dictionary-publishers Merriam-Webster have named their most popular word, based on the amount of look-ups in the dictionary.
According to The Irish Times, Merriam-Webster chose ‘surreal’ as the most popular word of 2016, which speaks volumes considering the amount of changes we’ve witnessed in regards to social, economic and cultural shifts among the Western world.
2016 saw Republican candidate Trump become the President-Elect, Brexit occur in the U.K. and multiple deaths of beloved celebrities including most recently, Zsa Zsa Gabor as well as David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen.
Editor of Merriam-Webster, Peter Sokolowski confirmed that surreal was the most popular word in the dictionary.
“Spikes of interest in a word are usually triggered by a single event,
“So what’s truly remarkable this year about ‘surreal’ is that so many different stories led people to look it up.
“Historically, ‘surreal’ has been one of the words most searched after tragedy, most notably in the days following 9/11. But it was associated with a wide variety of stories this year.”
Other regularly looked up words included ‘fascism’, ‘bigly’ and ‘deplorable’, all owing their newfound popularity to links with the US Presidential election.
In more popular culture terms, the Oscar win for Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant led many to look up the word ‘revenant’ and Prince’s untimely death gave the word ‘icon’ a considerable surge of look-ups also.
