Nominate your 2023 words of the year here.
Since 1990, the American Dialect Society has selected words of the year to highlight language change and to bring a few aspects of the study of linguistics to the public’s attention. The lighthearted vote is held each year at the time of the society’s annual conference. This vote for 2023 Word of the Year will be held at the Times Square Sheraton Hotel in New York City in conjunction with the 2024 annual meetings of the American Dialect Society and the Linguistic Society of America.
In advance of this (in)auspicious proceeding, we are once again fielding nominations from across the lexically inclined world and beyond. Below, please give your nomination for an overall word of the year. Although this is certainly not required, we’ve also left space for you to tell us a little about this word or provide rationale for your choice (this information helps us organize nominees into ballot categories).
We know it is hard to choose one word overall, so you may submit up to three top choices or upload a list. And don’t worry, you can fill out this survey as many times as you’d like throughout the year as new words form!
Some guidelines for making nominations:
- We are most interested in WOTY nominations which reflect your personal experience of 2023.
- For the sake of the WOTY vote, “word” is broadly defined to include multiword phrases, compounds, idiomatic expressions, and even emoji that behave like single lexical items.
- Nominated words do not have to be absolutely brand new but they should have reached some kind of peak in 2023. Ideal WOTY nominations are words which demonstrate widespread usage by a large number of people, in a variety of contexts and situations, and/or which reflect important events, people, places, ideas, or preoccupations of language users in 2023.
- Some illustrative examples of past winners include she as Word of the Millennium 2000; YouTube (as a verb) as Most Likely to Succeed 2006; the combining and nominalized forms of Occupy- as WOTY 2011; yeet as Informal WOTY 2018; and Before Times as Most Useful WOTY 2020.
For a list of all past Word of the Year nominees and winners in various categories, click here.
Nominate your 2023 words of the year here.
(Updated December 27, 2013.) From Thursday, January 2, 2014, through Saturday, January 4, the American Dialect Society will hold its next annual meeting in Minneapolis, hosted as usual by the Linguistic Society of America.
Download the preliminary full schedule (updated December 20), paper abstracts, and poster abstracts. These files will be updated with more details as the conference approaches.
HOTEL: Minneapolis Hilton, 1001 Marquette Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55403. See: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/event/lsa-2014-annual-meeting. The basic hotel room rate is $99/night for a single or double room. Larger rooms and rooms on the Executive Level are available as well at discounted rates. Attendees should use the link or phone numbers provided (and mention the LSA meeting if they’re reserving by phone) in order to get the discounted rate.
REGISTRATION: See: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/event/lsa-2014-annual-meeting. ADS members may register at LSA member rates. ADS members who are not members of LSA may click on the large red “Register for meeting” button at the top of the page. They’ll be asked to self-identify as a student registrant or a regular (i.e., non-student) registrant, and will initially be charged the nonmember rate. At checkout, they should use the coupon codes SSREGULAR (for regular registrants) or SSSTUDENT (for student registrants).
ADS REGISTRATION: Additional and entirely optional, but those who attend ADS sessions are encouraged to register with the ADS Executive Secretary for $20, students $10. This helps defray the cost of our BYOB reception and earns you a distinctive decoration for your LSA badge.
LUNCHEON: At 12:15 p.m. Saturday, January 4. Speaker and topic to come. Menu: mesclun greens salad, cherry chicken salad sandwich on croissant, kettle chips, macciato chocolate mousse cup. Cost is $40. Students who are members of ADS may attend free. Reservations may be made in advance with ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf at americandialect@mac.edu.
WOTY: The open nominating meeting for Words of the Year 2013 is at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, and the final vote at 5:30 p.m. Friday (see schedule below). Members and friends are invited to participate at both meetings.
Name of the Year: At the start of our WOTY session on Friday, we will also host the American Name Society’s announcement of its vote on Name of the Year 2013.
BYOB Reception: Cosponsored by Duke University Press, publisher of American Speech. After the Friday voting on Words of the Year, you’re invited to our annual Bring-Your-Own-Book reception from 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. Bring your new book or books; we’ll have tables along the walls where you can display them.
