If 2024 could be reflected in a word, it would be the gradual decline of a product or service online: enshittification.
At least that's according to Macquarie Dictionary which announced the colloquial noun as its word of the year this week, the committee adding: "This word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment."
November brings with it the first signs of summer and reflections on the year that's passing, with several other dictionaries offering either new words or new uses of old ones that were notable in the last 12 months.
For proof that words can evoke years: strollout.
David Astle, a "word nerd" and former co-host of Letters and Numbers on SBS, said: "[Strollout] very powerfully distils the year that was.
"All you have to think about is that word strollout, and you were back in that same hellscape that was the [COVID] lockdown. It is that word that is the perfect file tab for 2021."
Source: SBS News
Others, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, will reveal their words soon.
Source: SBS News
"You'll always get people who say 'It's the death of English' or 'Where are we going, off to hell in a wheelbarrow?' but you cannot deny the way that life has been trending with all the aspects of deteriorating online experiences ... that's all enshittification, and it just keeps compounding.
"So we need a word for it, and we've found one."
Source: SBS News
Mark Gwynn, senior researcher at the National Dictionary Centre, said shoppers had become cynical about the large supermarkets.
"The blend of the supermarket names Coles and Woolworths into Colesworth provides a succinct way of referring to both supermarkets while at the same time hinting at the negative aspects of what is perceived as an unfair duopoly," he said.
Other words that were part of the shortlist for word of the year for Macquarie included:
- — content considered to be low quality in terms of intellectual stimulation.
- — improving one's physical attractiveness as much as possible.
- Rawdogging — the act of undertaking a long-haul flight with no electronic entertainment, devices or reading material.
- Kup murri — an earth oven for pit cooking in the traditional Torres Strait Islander style.