Despite being common and straightforward, the word ‘woman’ was selected as Dictionary.com’s word of the year because it is ‘inseparable from the tale of 2022,’ according to the website. The website stated that the choice for this year ‘reflects the current societal conversations about gender, identity, and language as well as how people utilise dictionaries to make sense of these difficult themes’.
This year, searches for the word ‘woman’ on Dictionary.com dramatically rose during a number of high-profile occasions, including when a question about the term’s definition was posed on the main stage. According to CNN, John Kelly, senior director of editorial at Dictionary.com, stated in a news statement that ‘the basic topic of the meaning of the term ‘woman’ was at the core of so many crucial events, conversations, and decisions in our society this year’.
‘Our pick of ‘woman’ as the Term of the Year for 2022 – and how the word is defined, who is included in that definition, who the word applies and belongs to – underlines how essential the job of a dictionary is, and how dictionaries may touch people’s lives,’ he stated.
The Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, Serena Williams’ declaration that she was ‘evolving away’ from tennis, the protests in Iran, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, the equal pay agreement reached by the US women’s soccer team, and all of these significant news events all played a role in Dictionary.com’s choice of ‘woman’ as its word of the year.
According to the press release, Dictionary.com was sure to emphasise that, given the controversy surrounding the term this year, it wasn’t the final authority on it and that ‘the word belongs to each and every woman – however they define herself’. The other terms on Dictionary.com’s shortlist, which also gives a view into the year, including the emoji for the flag of Ukraine, ‘inflation’, ‘silent resigning,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘Wordle’.
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