100% Locally Owned, Independent and Free

100% Locally Owned, Independent and Free

Sami Muirhead: spelling out the process used in choosing the word of the year

Do you have a news tip? Click here to send to our news team.

‘Missing link’: 300m of pathway added near school

A new pathway extension connecting with a public state high school is proving to be the ‘missing link’ to improving pedestrian safety and connectivity. Noosa District State More

‘Mini Woolies’ helping students with real-life training

People with a disability and autism now have access to real-life learning on how to do supermarket jobs thanks to a joint initiative between More

Sami Muirhead: my countless summer loves

It will be summer in just a heartbeat, and I can smell the salt of the ocean and the sweet scent of the frangipani More

New-look sports bar pays homage to its 1970s roots

A much-loved club has unveiled its latest transformation, turning its familiar sports bar into a stylish new hub that blends modern sophistication with a More

Photo of the day: sunset storm

Michele Gusman took this sunset photo during the storm on Saturday October 18 from Woombye looking towards the Blackall Range. No filters, just pure More

Developer seeks 70m hotel, offers to pay for foreshore

A developer is offering to pay for the final stage of a controversial foreshore redevelopment as part of its proposal to add two more More

I was eating my fruit mince pie and sipping my port last night when I read with interest the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year.

Okay, I really just wanted another chance to bang on about how obsessed I am with fruit mince pies.

They are my very favourite food at this time of the year and those plump circles of raisins bring me extraordinary amounts of happiness.

My younger friends also make me sound old.

Fruit mince pies are ‘old people food’, apparently.

Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb.

Back to the word of the year and it is ‘rizz’.

Rizz is a word young people use as slang for style, charm and attractiveness, or the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.

There are so many new words. Picture: Shuttertock

That spawned a crush of memes, as overall usage surged by a factor of about 15 over the previous year, Oxford’s data showed.

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages, the dictionary division, says that this year’s choice reflects the way social media has increased the pace of language change exponentially.

Plus, he says, the word simply has … rizz.

Oxford’s Word of the Year is based on usage evidence drawn from its continually updated corpus of more than 22 billion words, gathered from news sources across the English-speaking world.

The selection, Oxford says, is meant “to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations” of the preceding year, while also having “potential as a term of lasting cultural significance”.

Usually, Oxford’s lexicographers assemble a shortlist of words or expressions that have seen a statistically relevant surge, and then choose a winner.

But in recent years, Oxford has turned the selection process into the lexicographical version of a reality show.

Judges had to tough task of picking one word from about 22 billion. Picture: Shutterstock

Last year, Oxford let the public vote on three finalists.

‘Goblin mode’ – a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations – came out on top.

It’s like ‘hurkle-durkle’: to lay in bed long after you should have got up.

This year, the public was invited to cut the shortlist in half by weighing in on four head-to-head thematic pairings (some 30,000 people voted).

Oxford’s team then made the final selection.

So it’s time to shirk work and hurk the dirk and razzle your rizz.

Okay … sorry for trying to act cool when I really just want to go back to eating fruit mince pies and drinking my port.

Sami Muirhead is a radio announcer, blogger and commentator.
For more from Sami, tune into Mix FM.

Subscribe to SCN’s free daily news email

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
This field is hidden when viewing the form
[scn_go_back_button] Return Home
Share