Commiserations to words like ‘peace’, ‘equality’, ‘love’ and ‘understanding’, you just didn’t have what it takes this year. According to Oxford University Press, this year was all about the word(s) ‘Goblin mode’, which beat out runners-up ‘Metaverse’ and ‘#IStandWith’ to become 2022’s Oxford Word of the Year. Which is pretty dumb because two of those aren’t even singular words. We know standards are declining, but come on! You’d at least expect a dictionary to know the difference between a word and phrase.
What does Goblin mode even mean? Well…
An example of Goblin mode via The Guardian:
Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, says:
“Given the year we’ve just experienced, ‘goblin mode’ resonates with all of us who are feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. It’s a relief to acknowledge that we’re not always the idealised, curated selves that we’re encouraged to present on our Instagram and TikTok feeds.”
Seems pretty lame that so many people are hearing the ‘word of the year’ for the first time, but I guess Oxford is doing their best to appeal to the chronically online/TikTok generation where the word was popularised this year. In fact they seem to have gone into goblin mode themselves by even selecting a two-worded phrase as the word of the year. Then again, previous Oxford words of the year include ‘vax’ (2021), ‘climate emergency’ (2019) and ‘selfie’, so they’ve been guilty of this before.
Still, the alternative was ‘Metaverse’ so we shouldn’t be too annoyed, although that is a singular word at least. Not to mention the other choice which had a hashtag in it. Oh well, time to enter Goblin Mode.
As for 2020’s ‘Word of the Decade’… that might pxss you off even more.
