It seems to come earlier every year: publishers and dictionaries choosing their “word of the year”. Initially intended to sum up a meaningful trend or feeling that represents the past year, the exercise is now becoming a competition to identify and highlight fashionable slang. Collins went with brat, the Charli XCX album phenomenon as applied to […]… Learn more.

Ever since the American Dialect Society selected a Word of the Year at its conference in 1990, over half a dozen English dictionaries have anointed an annual word or phrase that’s meant to encapsulate the zeitgei… Learn more.