Merriam-Webster has chosen “polarization” as its Word of the Year for 2024. This selection comes on the heels of a highly contested U.S. presidential election, which captured global attention.
Merriam-Webster.com defines polarization as the “division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.”
The term “polarization” and its verb form “polarize” have a surprising origin story that dates back to the early 1800s. The words initially referred to the behavior of light waves. The original meaning of “polarize” – “to cause to vibrate in a specific pattern” – has since evolved into a political and cultural context.
Other words that stood out in their lookup data are totality, demure, fortnight, pander, resonate, allision, weird, cognitive, and democracy.
Incidentally, “demure” was Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year 2024. In social media, the term was used to describe a “refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior in various contexts, such as at work or on a plane.”
Meanwhile, Oxford Dictionaries selected “brain rot” as its Word of the Year, which was used to describe the decline of a person’s mental or intellectual state caused by excessive exposure to low-quality, addictive content on platforms like TikTok.
