Word of The Year

Every year, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary selects a word of the year. The selection is determined by what word has been searched for most frequently on the company's web site. Since the humans who make up society seem to be more stupid with each generation, that's a lot of searches to go through. The word of the year usually reflects a trendy view of the anxieties of the moment. No, that doesn't mean this year's word of the year is the left wing's favorite "racist". This year it's that word so often misused by less than educated athletes or protesters. The word of the year for 2016 is "surreal".

Merriam-Webster defines surreal as "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream."  This means it is misused more often than not. To describe a terrorists attack, for example, as surreal is bizarre, given that terrorists attacks are almost the norm today and not unlikely or dreamy events. But then, words often change with misuse. They can be redefined into something that barely resembles their former meaning. That English words change so often is both annoying and a reflection of how the English language is clever enough to adapt to its users.

According to Merriam-Webster, "surreal" was researched multiple times throughout the year by the less than literate out there. The most frequent occasions for the search were after the terror attack in Brussels in March, after the coup attempt in Turkey over the summer,  after the terrorist attack in Nice, and, of course, on November 9, after the  election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America. Hillary Clinton and her brood frequently call Trump's election "surreal". In fact, with a lousy candidate and corrupt political party she represents, I would call the Trump election "logical".

Webster said the choice of surreal wasn't so ..well...surreal (I am getting in the mood for using that word) after all. It lists nine other words that people almost Googled as much in 2016. They include:

1) Revenant - (which is a ghost like corpse that terrorizes the living) was the name of an Oscar winning movie staring the over exposed and over hyped Leonardo DiCaprio. Naturally his fans wanted to know what the word meant.
2) Icon- When Prince died the media and fans couldn't call him an "icon" enough. A religious work of art that is highly cherished is an icon. Prince was never that.
3) In Omnia Paratus- The translation to English is "Ready for all things". This became a trendy phrase in 2016 that almost no one who used it fully understood.
4) Bigly-Thank Trump for this nonsense word. He sometimes  pronounces the two words, big and league, together so that they sound like “bigly” when he says them.
5) Deplorable- The deplorable  Hillary Clinton was responsible for the many searches for “deplorable,” when in a campaign speech she said half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable.
6) Irregardless- Not a real word, but rather a corruption of the real word "regardless' We can thank the air headed news commentators continual use of it today for making it such a searched word in 2016.
7) Assumpsit- I had never heard of this one until reading about the Webster word of the year. It means "an action to recover damages for breach of a contract." With more and more of us suing each other for less and less, it makes sense people would Google this one so much in 2106.
8) Faute de Mieux- Another trendy foreign phrase this year meaning  "lack of something better or more desirable". In this age of materialism and desire for a better electronic device to rot our brains, I guess wasting your life with last year's cell is a Faute de Mieux.
9) Feckless- What Barrack Obama's opponents call him. Well, they have a point. Obama is an empty suit of sort, weak and full of empty words.

If all these words and the misuse or overuse of them bothers you, relax. They will soon quickly disappear from use or interest, only to be quickly replaced with more nonsense in 2017. After all, those words are all too "surreal" for us anyway.....