Attention, people! Oxford English Dictionary has officially declared the Word Of The Year 2023 so you can let go of the breath you’ve been holding. The most popular word, according to Oxford and thousands of social media users is ‘rizz’.
In case you’ve not been near a social media platform for the past year or do not belong to Gen Z, ‘rizz’ is essentially a new term for ‘game’ or ‘ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner’. The word was selected from a pool of eight other popular 2023 terms, including ‘Swifties’, ‘prompt’, and ‘Situationship’.
“Rizz is a term that has boomed on social media,” said Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl in a press release, “ (Rizz) speaks to how language that enjoys intense popularity and currency within particular social communities—and even in some cases lose their popularity and become passé—can bleed into the mainstream.”
While the term was officially coined by influencer Kai Cenat during a Twitch stream, it was made mainstream by actor Tom Holland during a now-viral interview with Buzzfeed, where he declared that he had “no rizz whatsoever”.
How Is ‘Word Of The Year’ Selected?
The competition claims to celebrate recently-created words or expressions that symbolise a time. So the good people over at Oxford Dictionary identified words that have gained significant cultural significance over the year and had social media users vote for the one that should get crowned as the official ‘Word Of The Year’. According to the official release, the selected words have a “potential as a term of lasting cultural significance or providing a snapshot of social history”.
What do you think of the ‘Word Of The Year 2023’?
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