Tag: word of the year

Word of the Year

AI Slop

I understand why AI slop is such a big deal.

Who said the e-revolution killed reading? Now we get to read all about how Kate Winslet once refused to wear eye shadow for a shot’s retake, and took a stand for all females the world over. Character matters more than looks girls. Remember that. Remember Kate Winslet took on all of Hollywood with her courage that day and redefined the industry. I think Julia Roberts might’ve done it too. Or was it Meryl Streep? I forget.

If you want to change the way you say something, go for it, Emma Thompson changed the way the industry thinks by saying what she thought one day. Even Audrey Hepburn proved she was more than a pretty face by saying something, You’ve got this.

We just need you to become famous, and then AI will make a courageous princess of you. 

3 paragraphs or 300 words about it. Then, thousands of likes and shares, and you are well on your way. 

We also know that Paul McCartney may have said good-night to his grandchildren when they stayed over with him. Now, what a wonderful human-being? If only, we all learned that the smallest words have the largest impact. Keanu Reeves also said something the other day. I am not entirely sure. But it all goes to prove that AI is watching and learning.

So, I have been saying goodnight to all things bright and beautiful, all things big and small ever since. I may have frightened the deer in the meadows one night, but – I learn from the best. Saying goodnight to fellow beings is a form of compassion.

All day everyday in our scrolling for your amusement and entertainment. The AI slop is generating, regurgitating, and filling our spaces. As someone who lamented the increasingly short ways in which we communicate, the AI slop seems to be doing the writing for us. Now, all we need is a chip to read it all, let us know what to think and just program it in seamlessly. The human experience bypassing the human. 

It isn’t just about the words either. The other day an old lady took on a tiger. It went viral.

Inspired by her, an old lady in a rural village ran after her cat and is now recovering from a hip fracture. AI claims to have no part in it.

Cynical? Yes. 

6-7

Come on! We can do better than that. We can give ourselves maybe a 6-7 on effort can’t we?

I cannot help but think how marvelous it would be to have AI bots as your students in a classroom. “That is not good. Try again. “

Voila!

“You are right!” It says. So mature, so humble, and so willing to try again. Over and over till the teacher tires of it. Such hardworking bot-kids.

I have seen children whine their way through a single sheet of paper for an entire hour.

That is what the human psyche is capable of. What’s wrong with 6-7-ing our way through life? We were doing perfectly just that till AI slop decided to come along and make us more productive. So, you want us to 8-9 our way through life now? What gives?

Rage-baiting

All you have to do is make a reference to a certain prime number in the 60’s. Eye rolls and exasperation follows – but I could see this leading to rage-baiting too.

Stop rage-baiting the hardly working children, AI Slop!

Parasocial

One word that reminds me of simpler times when we laughed at the bigger effort jokes. I remember the pater laughing well before he found the YouTube clip for me – he laughed through it all explaining every sentence the comedian spoke in that clip.

The build up to the comedic punch-line is as funny as the joke itself. “Do you really think you can arrest me for an expired driver’s license?” the comedian says on the screen. “Shall I make a call to Inspector General of Police?”

The traffic policeman freezes. “Do you know him?” He says.

“Yes – but he doesn’t know me!” says the c, and the audience collapses laughing.

I must check the number of times that snippet was played and replayed on YouTube for laughs.

Must we have a word for the kind of anticipatory laugh that comes from that long-ish sentiment?

Yes. Snaps fingers. Efficiency. Have you forgotten? Get with the times.

Now, the comedian needs to be stopped by the policeman demanding to see his expired driver’s license and he says, “Parasocial IG”.

Parasocial means: Having a one-sided relationship with a famous person. 

Vivek did not redefine the industry with that 6-7-ish attempt at comedy did he? No, he worked through 6-7 retakes of that shot before they got it right on cinema. He rage-baited that traffic cop for a laugh.

Sigh! So what have all these words got in common? You ask.

They are all winners of the Word of the Year title.

  • Merriam Webster – Slop
  • Oxford University Press – rage-bait
  • Dictionary.com – 67
  • Cambridge dictionary – Parasocial

2022 Phrase of the Year: Let’s See!

I was watching a movie the other day, and the word ‘bigotry’ came up. I went for almost 4 decades without ever hearing that word, and then all of a sudden, the word was everywhere. In news articles, movie dialogues, forwarded WhatsApp messages. I had read history books, had read many books about World War II, and was always reasonably interested in new words. Yet – here it was. When I found out the meaning, I felt a bit silly for not knowing the word. Suddenly, I could label many thinking patterns (and people) as bigoted, where previously I’d gone without labeling them. (Was that a good thing, a bad thing or not a thing at all?)

Then a few days later, I heard that the word of the year in 2022 was ‘Gaslighting‘. Another term that I had never heard of growing up, and yet, here it was – annoyingly present and able to pinpoint a particular trait.

Astounding.

That got me thinking about the words I’d probably used the most this year, and it was not a word that came to mind, but a phrase.

A phrase that I’d used over and over again in my professional capacity, or while describing the uncertainties of our world: “Let’s see!”

I remember the old pater using a Tamil word, Paappom (paarpom) – meaning “Let’s see! “ – shortened from பார்க்கலாம் 






Paappom annoyed us. It usually meant we did not get a ‘Yes’, and every child knows that not getting a ‘Yes’ immediately meant that reason could swoop in, and could sway our ask toward ’No’, which was unacceptable of course. I mean, why would you want to think about taking us out for an ice-cream? That only meant the rains could come, someone could catch a cold, or the interest to go to the ice-cream store could wane.
Paappom indeed.





Paappom was also an ambiguity. A pendulum that could swing between this-and-that and you never knew where it could stop at decision-time.
Paappom could bring about positive outcomes but that required waiting and delayed gratification.





So, paappom was a true mystifier.





Yet, this year, I found myself using Paappom’s English equivalent, “Let’s see!”, so often, I felt like a bit of a pendulum myself.





It meant, I wasn’t sure of the next step: should I take a next step, should I wait? What if something changed, that I had not anticipated? If ever there was a year encompassing all these qualities, it was this one. So, I paappom-ed. A lot.





As life goes on, I find myself ‘paappom’-ing more and more often, with my touching faith in luck and providence that time will sort things out (especially unpleasant situations – but I can assure you that seldom happens.)





Anyway, 2022 being a ‘Let’s see!” Year means that we do have to see what 2023 looks like.





A colleague once told me that their family thinks of words to live by in the upcoming year during Christmas holidays. If they chose, “Excellent!”, they answered everyone who asked them how they were with ‘Excellent’ for the next year. Isn’t that an excellent idea?





I asked the children for possible words the year I heard this, and promptly abandoned the exercise, for the words that came up were horrendous, cringe-worthy and frankly ridiculous. (The nourish-n-cherish household, I tell you!)





Anyway, what words would you like to choose for 2023?

	


	





	

		
		
What’s your 2021 WotY (Word of the Year) Choice?
	


	
	
	

		
2020 escapes adjectives and mere words cannot quite capture the irony of the year. Ironically, last year when we selecting a word for the year in the nourish-n-cherish household, the teenager vehemently voted for the word, ‘Ironic’ (after I shot down ‘Sarcastic’ as an entry of course). I had been inspired by a colleague who regularly answered ‘How are you?” with the word “Terrific!” (In meetings through the year).


One time, I asked him whether he always said that, since it was a shot of positivity in the middle of the humdrum, and he said that it was a family tradition for them. Their family sat together and decided on a word to use through the upcoming year to answer the question ‘How are you?’. The logophile in me sat up and took notice. I got the gleam that the children have identified, and scram when they detect it. It is what gets them into walking miles in the wilderness, or fun read-a-thons.


Where was I? Yes – the word thing. When I came home with this heart warming suggestion, I expected in my naïveté, to be taken up on the word-building, and lists filling up with words such as : Fantastic, Fun, Awesome, or even a word that is only used in our home, Imaginate. But of course that is not what happened.


The words put forth by the teenager were not going to be my words of the year by any stretch. So, given chaotic, neurotic (Really! This child expects me to answer ‘How are you?’ with ‘Neurotic’!) , dystopian, terrible, quixotic, and another few like this, we decided on Ironic. Luckily, we did not use this word to answer every ‘How do you do?” question during the year. Last night when I mentioned the word-of-the-year-greeting-exercise again, the children said, “Come to think of it, our word choice was not bad huh?! Ironic how that worked out! Get it? Get it?”


It was my turn to moan, but also think. Maybe there is something to the whole thought->actions->universe themes that we hear about all the time.


“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” – Lao Tzu


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It was a year in which ‘Ironic’ could be used with ease. Ironic how people react to pandemics, ironic how markets and stock market indices react to global pandemics, ironic how we are able to find pockets of quiet in the hectic world thanks to the very pandemic that is causing so much pain and suffering. Ironic how we determine leadership responses or lack thereof in our electoral choices, ironic that the very science naysayers will be benefited by a vaccine developed within a year of the genome mapping thanks to Science. Ironic how humans the social beings reacted to social distancing, and ironic too, how the themes of nationalism, chauvinism, racism, sexism were all rendered meaningless by a virus (too tiny to be rendered in colors by electron microscopes, but large enough to unite us all in the act of being human). If you are human, you are susceptible to the virus. 


    

  • 2020 word of the year turned out to be (no surprise here): Pandemic. 
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Quote from BBC article:


This year has seen so many seismic events that Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its word of the year to encompass several "Words of an Unprecedented Year".

Its words are chosen to reflect 2020's "ethos, mood, or preoccupations".

They include bushfires, Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, circuit-breaker, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough, Black Lives Matter and moonshot.

Use of the word pandemic has increased by more than 57,000% this year.

"It's both unprecedented and a little ironic - in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other."


    

  • 2019 was the inclusive gender neutral pronoun, They
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  • 2018 went for Justice
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  • 2017 for Feminism
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  • 2016 was Surreal (truly!)
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I wonder what 2021 holds in store for us. 


2020 also embodied a lot of good words such as Shinrin Yoku (forest bathing) Komerabi (the beautiful word denoting sun rays piercing through the leaves).


I’d like to hear some of the words you can think of for the coming year. I am thinking of ones that made the children say ‘Meh!”. Whatever else 2020 taught us, it is that we can make it through together if we can retain our sense of humor (the floods of WhatsApp forwards come to mind), and to delight in the ordinary. So I pump for the more humdrum ones: Life, Hope, Joy, Peace, Happiness.


What about you? I wonder what frabjous words Dr Seuss or Lewis Carroll would pick.