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Polarisation, a word that describes the division of two sharply distinct opposites, is the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s word of the year.
“Polarisation means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, before Monday’s announcement. “Polarisation means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the centre.”
The word is spelled “polarization” in American English.
The results of the 2024 presidential election in the United States rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world – or were cause for celebration, depending on whom you ask.
The election, which saw Republican Donald Trump win another White House term, was so divisive that many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation.
According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about eight in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Trump’s views – but not Harris’s – were too extreme while about seven in 10 Trump voters felt the same way about the Democratic vice president.
The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarisation” reflects scientific and metaphorical definitions. It’s most commonly used to mean “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings”.
The scientific definition relates to radiation and magnetism.
Merriam-Webster, an American dictionary that logs 100 million page views a month on its website, chooses its word of the year based on data tracking a rise in search and usage.
The Merriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2024 is ‘polarization.’
About half of you might take issue with this. https://t.co/8MkJtwOgu6
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) December 9, 2024
The 2023 pick was “authentic”. It was picked as large swaths of the US struggled to reach consensus on what is real.
“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everybody,” Sokolowski told The Associated Press news agency.
“It’s a kind of backstop for meaning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in the culture.”
It’s notable that “polarisation” originated in the early 1800s – and not during the Renaissance, as did most words with Latin roots about science, Sokolowski said. He called it a “pretty young word”.
“Polarisation” extends beyond political connotations. It’s used to highlight new cracks and deep rifts alike in pop culture, technological trends and other industries.
All the scrutiny over Taylor Swift’s private jet usage? Polarising. The feud between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Polarising. A Cambridge scholar’s PhD thesis on the “politics of smell”? You guessed it: polarising.
Paradoxically though, people tend to see eye to eye on the word itself. Sokolowski cited its frequent use among people across the political spectrum, including commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
“It’s used by both sides,” he said, “and in a little bit ironic twist to the word, it’s something that actually everyone agrees on.”
Rounding out some of this year’s top words:
Demure
TikToker Jools Lebron’s 38-second video describing her workday makeup routine as “very demure, very mindful” lit up the summer with memes. The video has been viewed more than 50 million times, yielding “huge spikes” in lookups, Sokolowski said, and prompting many to learn it means reserved or modest.
Fortnight
Taylor Swift’s song Fortnight, featuring rapper Post Malone, undoubtedly spurred many searches for this word, which means two weeks. “Music can still send people to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said.
Totality
The solar eclipse in April inspired awe and much travel. There were tens of millions of people who lived along a narrow stretch from Mexico’s Pacific coast to eastern Canada, otherwise known as the path of totality, where locals and travellers gazed skywards to see the moon fully blot out the sun. Generally, the word refers to a sum or aggregate amount – or wholeness.
Resonate
“Texts developed by AI have a disproportionate percentage of use of the word ‘resonate’,” Sokolowski said. This may be because the word, which means to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way, can add gravitas to writing. But artificial intelligence “also betrays itself to be a robot because it’s using that word too much”.
Allision
The word was looked up 60 times more often than usual when, in March, a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. “When you have one moving object into a fixed object, that’s an allision, not a collision. You’re showing that one of the two objects struck was not, in fact, in motion,” Sokolowski said.
Weird
This summer on the TV news show Morning Joe, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called Republican leaders “weird”. It may have been what launched his national career, landing him as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Though it’s a word that people typically misspell – is it “ei” or “ie”? – and search for that reason, its rise in use was notable, Sokolowski said.
Cognitive
Whether the word was used to raise questions about President Joe Biden’s debate performance or Trump’s own age, it cropped up often. It refers to conscious intellectual activity – such as thinking, reasoning or remembering.
