And The 2016 Word Of The Year Is…
The American Dialect Society's pick for the Word of the Year 2016 is "dumpster fire".
Yep, that's right, it took an extremely intelligent and talented group of linguists lexicographers a full year to choose the Word of the Year, and they chose "dumpster fire".
In case you are wonder what "dumpster fire" actually means, here is the Oxford Dictionaries definition:
dumpster fire, noun: an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation
So, why did they pick "dumpster fire" as the word of the year? In The American Dialect Society's press release that said “As a metaphor for a situation that is out of control or poorly handled, dumpster fire came into prominence in 2016, very frequently in the context of the U.S. presidential campaign.”
Not only did The American Dialect Society vote on the overall word of the year, but they also chose winning words in nine other categories like "Slang Word of the Year", "WTF Word of the Year" and "Hashtag of the Year". You can check out the full list of winners on TIME Magazine's website.
Congrats, dumpster fire, 2016 was definitely your year. But, I'm not going to lie, I'm really hoping 2017 is a "dumpster fire"-less year, I don't need another year of exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situations.