Merriam-Webster’s 2019 word of the year is the gender neutral pronoun “they”:
Inbox:
Merriam-Webster has announced their word of the year: the gender neutral pronoun They
— David Mack (@davidmackau) December 10, 2019
Wait. People are looking up a definition of “they”?
The nonbinary pronoun "they" has been named Merriam-Webster's word of the year. The American English dictionary revealed that searches for the term have risen by 313% in the last year. https://t.co/uSY29FvHgV
— CNN (@CNN) December 10, 2019
Should’ve been “crawdad,” TBH:
Runners-up included “quid pro quo,” “impeach” and "crawdad” https://t.co/rxCT8NhXVB
— Bloomberg (@business) December 10, 2019
You know, maybe their metrics are off if one of the other runner-ups based on “look-ups” was “the.” From The Guardian:
“They” was also competing with another building block of the English language: “the”. According to Merriam-Webster, it is “truly rare to see one of the most basic function words in the English language spike in our data”, but after the Ohio State University filed a trademark application in August for the word “the” with the US Patent Office, look-ups for “the” spiked 500%.
Anyway, Laura Ingraham has a suggestion of her own that’s much, much better:
My word of the year: “amphigory.” https://t.co/J4nxDRos7v https://t.co/gs4YrhSwHG
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) December 10, 2019
From Merriam-Webster:
: a nonsense verse or composition : a rigmarole with apparent meaning which proves to be meaningless
Perfect!
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