Dictionary publishers like to end the year by announcing the new words that that they have added to the lexicon based on the frequency with which they have appeared in print during the preceding 12 months. Not all of these words are new, and this year’s crop consists mainly of familiar words that have undergone shifts in meaning. Thus, Cambridge nominated ‘manifest’, a verb closely related to ‘manifesto’ that means ‘to make known, to show or make explicit’. Now, apparently, it can be used to describe the belief that wanting something badly enough is more likely to make it happen. Dua Lipa, the singer-songwriter, is quoted as saying that she had ‘manifested performing at Glastonbury’, meaning that she had ‘written, wished, and dreamt about it’ for many years prior to doing so in 2024.
Three of the nominated words of the year in 2024 relate to social media: Merriam-Webster’s word was ‘polarization’ (sic: it is an American dictionary) to describe the way that issues tend to be presented now as black and white, with no subtle shades of grey. Dictionary.com proposed ‘demure’, meaning to refrain from the kind of excessive, forceful, aggressive, and abusive language that characterises so much social media interaction, and instead to remain calm, composed, and courteous. Oxford nominated ‘brain rot’, defined as ‘mental fatigue from digital overload’ (to which Sherds would like to add ‘and excessively long online meetings’).
No matter how well-read you are or how wide your vocabulary might be, there are always new words to learn. Sherds discovered the original meaning of ‘pittance’ recently, while reading James G Clark’s The Dissolution of the Monasteries (Yale University Press, 2021). The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as ‘a very small or inadequate amount of money’ and gives as an example: ‘he paid his workers a pittance’. But historically it meant the opposite: derived from the Latin pietas, it referred to an extra allowance of food or wine paid for by a donor in return for prayers on the anniversary of his or her death or to mark a seasonal commemoration, such as a particular saint’s feast day. James Clark’s point was that the number of pittances was so great in some monastic institutions that special foods were typically being served on two days out of seven, undermining the monastic principles of fasting, sobriety, and abstinence.
