67 - Words of the Week of the Year 2022

843 turns

• linkBecause Language theme playing
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello and welcome to a very special end-of-year Words of the Year episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language.My name is Daniel Midgley.I'm joined by our friends and patrons, people who have supported the show for ages and ages, or even just last week.So, it's great to have you.Thank you for being here.With me now, she's all tuckered out after a night on the tiles with Nobel Prize winners.It's Hedvig Skirgård.Hedvig, what have you been doing?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hello.Yes, one of the people at my workplace got a Nobel Prize, which is fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's amazing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.He is the director of the genetics department, Mr.Svante Pääbo, and he got a Nobel Prize.During the pandemic, he and his department developed this very quick test where you can test covid in saliva.We were doing it within the institute, and he was also doing it, or they were also doing it for a nightclub here, Leipzig.There's a nightclub here called the Distillery, which is one of the oldest clubs.People kept saying last night that it was the oldest in the world, but people in Germany always say that something is the oldest in the world somewhere.It's old, it's a classic institution called the Distillery.And he did the test for guests there so that they could have events on during the pandemic, because they were very covid compliant.When he got the Nobel Prize, they were like, "Why don't you come and have a big party at our house?" So, we had free food and free drinks for like…I think there were like 200, 300 people there, probably more.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Goodness gracious, they were grateful.It sounds great.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It was a good time, and Mr.Svante was hopping along on the dance floor with the best of them.It was great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig, it seems to me that you are someone who hobnobs with the intelligentsia.As far as the intellectual world, you're pretty high flying.Would that be right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesPartying all night with Nobel Prize winners?Oh, it's nothing.No big deal.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I tried to speak to him, but everyone tried to speak to him.I don't know him.Everyone was invited.Literally, everyone in our institute was invited, and we all got to bring at least a plus one.So, it was a lot of people.I was not very special.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But what you're not saying is that after that, you got to bed at a reasonable hour so that you could come here and hang with us and talk Words of the Year.So, thank you very much.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right.Well, today on this episode, we are going to be talking through Words of the Year.Not just Words of the Year from dictionary bodies and word lovers around the world, and even in languages other than English, but we're also going to be revealing the Because Language Word of the Week of the Year for 2022, as voted by you, listeners, friends, people who bumped into our page, followers, and so on.So, we're ready.Please feel free to comment if you feel like.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, let's see the first one, Collins.The Collins Dictionary Word of the Year was permacrisis, defined as an extended period of instability and insecurity.Their rationale was that we have had a number of a never-ending string of Black Swan events that any one of which would have defined a typical year.But now we've got political instability, we've got a war in Ukraine, climate change, cost of living crisis, energy crisis, everything crisis.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, permacrisis.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What a way to start.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Amazing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just thought "Collins, are you okay?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait.Collins, where are they based?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't know, but my memory of Collins is that they're mostly geared toward English learners.That was my sense.That might be wrong.But they do a lot of stuff with English learners.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.Collins Online Dictionary.crosstalk
• linkARIAFLAME - Even language learners because they do French…Collins French and Collins German and Collins Italian.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.
• linkARIAFLAME - Collins does all sorts of stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, sorry, before I get too far into it, forgot to mention, Ben is unavoidably detained.I think he's in someone's car boot somewhere.I have texted him how to get out.By the way, this is something that's very important to look up beforehand.He'll be joining us as soon as he can.Ahem, anyway, yes, permacrisis.So, that's one.By the way, if you have any comments, feel free to just unmute and just bang them out like Ariaflame did.Let's go to the Cambridge Dictionary.Their word was Homer.H-O-M-E-R.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Why?What?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yup.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like the Greek man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, not the Greek man.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the Simpson man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not The Simpsons man.No, a HOMER is when someone in baseball hits a homerun.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, are you serious that that is the sense that they're using?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is the sense in which they mean.The reason why they chose that word is because it was a Wordle word for the Wordle word game one day, and whencrosstalkpeople found it inexplicably perplexing.So, they hustled over to the Cambridge Dictionary— not specifically, but dictionaries in general —to look it up.That's why.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There were many Wordle words…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it also like a type of person, like a homebody is a homer?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have never heard a homebody described as a homer before, although it might be somebody who has an infallible ability to conduct themselves homeward under perplexing conditions.Let's just take a look at HOMER in the dear old Oxford English Dictionary.Oh, I see also that a homer or an omer was a measure of liquid.Interesting.And that's the first sense.And then, a homing pigeon.Hey, see, there you go.I had that instinct.exhalesWhenever there's even a slight curveball in the Wordle, whenever there's a word that's specifically American or that seems especially like…I noticed that HOWDY, H-O-W-D-Y was the Wordle word last year one day, you never heard such complaining.People on Twitter were like, "That's not a word, it's a colloquialism at best." It's got like hundred or so years of track record.So, just weird complaints that people have.People are very sensitive about weird Wordle words.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're sensitive about losing and not being imaginative.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's it.By the way, I just looked in chat and I think that Diego and Margareth are correct that Collins are based in Scotland.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Very good.Thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I looked at their webpage, I think that's true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think this says interesting things about the reasons people use online dictionaries, because sometimes we imagine that people are using it to look up what a word means, because they don't know, but often it's just because they're having dictionary fights.Vaccine did the same thing.Vaccine had tons of lookups, because utter jackanapes on the internet were arguing that…this was a right-wing talking point, "It's not a vaccine unless it's 100% effective all the time under…In fact, maybe even 101% effective." That's part of the definition of the word.People were like, "Fucking show me where it says that that's the definition of a word."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No vaccine does that.I thought it was going to be like, "It's not a vaccine unless it comes from a cow."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.laughsThat's what I want to hear.
• linkLord Mortis - It's not a vaccine unless the researcher tested on themselves.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, something like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was surprised.I thought that Jenner tested the smallpox vaccine on himself, but he didn't.He used some kid, so gave him cowpox and then gave him smallpox.The kid was fine, luckily for the kid.Oh, well.
• linkLord Mortis - So, HOMER is their Word of the Year because they had a significant number of lookups of that word, is that their rationale?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is, and I gotta respect that, because they weren't trying to grab the moment.They weren't trying to say something monumental.They were saying, "This is the data.We may go no farther." I respect that.I like what they're doing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like that's a good methodology.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yup.Next one.Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year, GASLIGHTING.They also went by lookups.They said that lookups increased 1740%.However, they said that it wasn't because of any single event that they could identify.It's just that there seems to be an awful lot of it constantly going on.Gaslighting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe we should explain for some people what gaslighting is.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Please.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it is when you, I don't know exactly the etymology, but it is when you make someone else think that they're crazy by saying things so that they doubt themselves.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Undermining someone's confidence in their own…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, before we left the house last night, Ste went around and turned down all of our radiators.But when we come home, I could be, like, turn one of them up, and then be like, "Honey, you just forgot that one." I don't know.It's not an excellent example, but…
• linkDaniel Midgley - A good example would be, well, sometimes when you're in a bad relationship, you'll understand what I mean if I say that there are reality fights.You struggle with your terrible partner to establish the nature of reality and what you can agree upon.When you get somebody who is trying to undermine your confidence, then they're gaslighting you.The reason it's called gaslighting is because there was a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton called Gas Light where a husband is trying to undermine his wife's confidence in her reasoning or memory and so he's turning up and turning down the gas lights in the house.Gaslighting has become quite a thing.I think it's jumped from being in a relationship context dealing with narcissists to…I mean, we have to deal with a lot of narcissists in the political sphere, in the social sphere.I'm thinking of the podcast by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa called Gaslit Nation.We're seeing a jump from gaslighting into the political arena.So, that's interesting.
• linkLord Mortis - I am a little surprised that it isn't related to that trial that happened this year, but yeah, I guess…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What trial?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go back.What is this?
• linkLord Mortis - I'm using that trial because I don't really want to…The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp thing and I would have thought that gaslighting would have come up in that context in a huge way and that was like an extended period of time where that was going on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You might be right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That would be a good candidate for the instance because it wasn't one thing.It was like going all the way along.
• linkLord Mortis - Yeah, but that could be just so story…like a really neat, pithy explanation of the data that the data doesn't actually support.But yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good.Okay, let's move on to the Australian National Dictionary Centre, Ozworders.They had teal.We all know about teal.Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I know that when it comes to outdoorsy girls, there are teal girls and magenta girls.You know about that?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, wow.No, I do not.But I'm curious.You've got my attention.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Women's outdoor clothing are essentially in two colors, magenta and teal.People tend to just stick with one.You start picking magenta as soon you've got a whole outfit in magenta.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you mix the magenta and the teal, then you look like that '90s cup.The swashy cup design.You know the one?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I do.I think someone on TikTok or Twitter made the observation that people don't tend to do that.So, you're either a magenta girl or a teal girl.I don't know if that’s what this is related to.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Come on.We did this one with Tiger Webb back in episode…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was the political word teal.Many candidates, independent political candidates who were women and who were progressive but conservative-ish had a lot of success because people were really into their environmental message of or relating to an independent political candidate or politician who advocates for greater integrity in parliament and more action on addressing harmful climate change.So, that is a teal.
• linkARIAFLAME - Probably because it's partway between green and blue.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's it.Blue being the color of the Liberal Party, I believe, in Australia.This is very specific to the Australian…
• linkARIAFLAME - Where the Liberal Party in Australia is the Conservative Party.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.
• linkARIAFLAME - Just to confuse things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Just to be confusing.I always like to say that the Liberal Party is kind of the…oh, I'm screwing up my joke now.That the Republican Party is kind of like the Liberals and the Democratic Party is kind of like the Liberal Party.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But also, you got to uh, hm, uh, hm, uh…
• linkDaniel Midgley - The joke doesn't work anymore, by the way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but also, like, liberalism as a neoliberalism is quite a conservative ideology.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, this idea that Americans say that, "Oh, that's very liberal of you," or something, that's a very specific use.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's new.It's a new thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but also to me, like, "Oh, you poured my glass of wine very liberally." It's that kind of use, I feel like…
• linkARIAFLAME - crosstalk…for freedom.Liberal…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkARIAFLAME - It's related to freedom, isn't it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is.And then, neoliberalism is a very specific ideology that a lot of people just call liberalism.In Europe, most things that are called liberal are on the right side of things.I think US is the weird ones.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Once again, the US doing things that nobody else does, like using US letter paper or the imperial system.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God, I had to submit a journal article in US letter paper.I just changed the setting on Google Docs.It was fine, but…
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's fine.Then, you had to change all your date formats as well.Oh, America.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I'm never doing that.Sorry, you've got me on a tangent and I'm a bit distracted this morning.We had gaslighting from Merriam-Webster and teal from Australia National Dictionary.What is next?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I wanted to also say that the Australian National Dictionary had cooker, that was one of their runners-up.Cooker."He's a bit of a cooker." A derogatory term for a person involved in protests against vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and a range of other issues perceived to be infringing on personal freedom."Oh, I didn't know that that person was cooked."
• linkLord Mortis - Yeah.Cooked and cooker.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow.In the US, there's pilled, which is not the same, but similar.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.We'll talk about pilled.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, "That person is very pilled." In German, people who don't like vaccines are Querdenker, cross thinkers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like cross?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A cross.
• linkLord Mortis - Anecdotally, in technician and engineering fields, the phrase, "That thing is cooked," in Australia is often used for, "That thing is so broken you cannot fix it." "Such and such is cooked, we have to replace it."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Possibly an extension of, "Its goose is cooked"?Could that be where we get it?
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - More research is necessary.Let's go to Macquarie Dictionary.They had two votes.One was a committee that chose it, and the committee was people that are quite good.Tiger Webb was on that committee.David Astle was on the committee as well, other people.They chose TEAL, but then they also had the people's choice word.The candidates were GOBLIN MODE, which we'll get into.SPICY COUGH, which is covid.That's not just a regular cough, that's a spicy cough.The winner, voted on by people, humans, BACHELOR'S HANDBAG.Ooh.laughsWhich was one of ours a little while ago.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bachelor's handbag?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.How many episodes can we remember?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's the thing.Also, it's very early in the morning and I had a big night out.I'm the perfect audience surrogate here.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, you are.All right, audience, help us out.What's the bachelor's handbag?
• linkLord Mortis - It's the chicken thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's the chicken thing.
• linkDiego - It's a cooked chicken in a bag with a handle.I guess bachelors can't cook, so it's a prepared meal and they walk around with it.So, it's a bachelor's handbag.chuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Isn't it fitting that this involves a bag when it's got so much cultural baggage attached to it?Like knowledge about bachelors, knowledge about how willing they are to cook, knowledge about supermarkets.
• linkARIAFLAME - Maybe German supermarkets don't have them.Don't they?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's pretty Australian.You walk past the bread section and it's like, "Whaaaat?" vegetarian meat does not like the smell of all the bachelor's handbags.
• linkARIAFLAME - Mine's near the deli.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's what it is.Deli, that place that I ignore.I ignored the deli to the extent that I thought it was bread.Okay, fine.They also nominated…the committee for Macquarie, nominated truthtelling.They say, "With increased discussion of the First Nation's voice to parliament, there is a sharp focus on the need for clear, unembellished truthtelling about our past." To which I respond, word.Let's go on to Oxford Languages.They had a vote between Metaverse, goblin mode and #istandwith, and people chose goblin mode.This was voted on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yes.Good choice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - By the way, just want to say Oxford Languages is the one who did this.This is not the same as the Oxford English Dictionary.Sorry if I got that wrong, but this is the Oxford Language vote.I think goblin mode was a good choice but, Hedvig, when we talked about goblin mode earlier, you did not like it.The idea is that it's forgoing hygiene, staying at home in comfy clothes, kind of giving up on the niceties a little bit.I remember that that hit you askance.Do you still feel that way?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm a homebody.I like being home.I like being indoors.I have fared very well during this permacrisis because I don't suffer that much mentally.Other people are like, "I have to go outside at least once a day.Otherwise, I go mentally funny," and I don't have that problem, which I've discovered, which is fortunate for me considering the state of the world.I guess that I am at home and I'm in comfy clothes and things, but I do keep hygiene, like I do clean the kitchen.I don't know if that's goblin mode.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It sounds like you're missing a few key elements of going full goblin.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm still kind of fuzzy on the designations between trolls, goblins, and ogres.
• linkLord Mortis - Goblins are small things.Trolls and ogres are in the same kind of sizes, but trolls, when you cut them, they heal themselves.That's the D&D…
• linkARIAFLAME - Got to use fire or acid.
• linkLord Mortis - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesThank you.
• linkLord Mortis - Trolls are harder to get than ogres.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Trolls in traditional Scandinavian mythology also turn stone in sunlight, which they also do in Tolkienverse.
• linkARIAFLAME - And Terry Pratchett.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.In Tolkienverse, I think he says somewhere that goblins and orcs are the same.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Such a species would be very poorly adapted, it seems to me, to…crosstalk
• linkLord Mortis - Well, I think Pratchett's trolls are the funniest because as they get warmer, they get stupider.But if you cool them, they get really smart.
• linkARIAFLAME - Because of semiconductors.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think they use a similar logic in iZombie.Okay.Anyway.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The vote was between Metaverse, goblin mode and #istandwith, which came up because Ukraine or Rowling or many things.I'm glad Metaverse did not make it.That was kind of…does anybody want the Metaverse happen?
• linkLord Mortis - The Metaverse, I think, is dumb.Something happened in the last couple of that made it dumb.
• linkARIAFLAME - I think the CEO quit.
• linkLord Mortis - Carmack quit.Carmack left Meta on Friday, and he wrote a scathing thing that became public very quickly.In it, he basically goes almost as far to say that, "I don't think Meta is going to make it.I don't think this is going to happen.I think that they're just barking up the wrong tree and I'm going to go off and do AI stuff."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Look, I don't want to read my uncle's posts.I certainly don't want to experience them in 3D.I don't want to smell them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's just weird.But you understand why Mark Zuckerberg need…this is my own analysis…it's not my own analysis.It's fairly common, I'm sure everyone knows this already, but Facebook's problem is it doesn't own the device.If you want to look at Facebook, you have to use an Apple device or Android device or something else that Facebook does not control.And that means that's a chokepoint.Apple can, for example, prevent Facebook from tracking you across devices, which means that they're cutting out advertiser dollars, which means advertiser dollars don't go to Meta.
• linkLord Mortis - It's more than that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's more than that?
• linkLord Mortis - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s news.
• linkLord Mortis - The VR headset, by its nature, has cameras, and those cameras can see inside your house, and Meta owns all of that data.If you have a Quest headset…that's in the license agreement, they're allowed to take all of that data and they're allowed to repurpose it for anything that they want.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We're already really creeped out by Instagram ads that are suspiciously accurate.We don't need more.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.It's just one more way in which Meta really just does not care about its user base.I said years ago on a Talk the Talk episode, there was a thing…remember that one where some researchers got a hold…they allowed some researchers to use data to turn up the negative sentiment or positive sentiment on individual users feeds and see how they felt?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I remember that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I said, "If Facebook doesn't get this under control, it's going to get bad." Well, Facebook did not get this under control.Facebook showed that it really was willing to compromise user satisfaction and user safety.
• linkLord Mortis - I don't know if we want to go down that rabbit hole, but not only they didn't pay attention to the results of that study, the only consent they had for running that study was their license agreement.They didn't ask the users if they wanted to opt into anything.So, that was essentially like an unconsented-to experiment on a whole bunch of people.There's a lot of stuff happening in the Mastodon space where researchers are looking at Mastodon public data and going, "Oh, we can do the same things we do here on Facebook." A lot of the Mastodon admins are going, "No, you don't own this.Just because this is public does not mean you are allowed to reprocess this.You need to ask consent.If we catch you, we will ban you from this instance." There's a big fight going on about that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you, Lord Mortis.That is honestly the best advertisement for Mastodon I've heard so far.That is very exciting.Ooh.Speaking of exciting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Exciting?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel, yes, we have a new person joining us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Who is that person?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who is that…?Sorry, I am…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Who is it?
• linkARIAFLAME - It's not the Not the Ben.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is it Ben?All right, I'm going to pin him.All right, that's cool.Thank you.I was unaware of that.So, thanks.Well, let's move on until he gets here.Dictionary.com's was woman.They said, "This year, searches for the word 'woman' on Dictionary.com spiked significantly multiple times in relation to separate high profile events." For example…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkARIAFLAME - Bloody Matt Walsh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Rowling.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's another.US Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson had her hearing, and Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn tried to turn it into a circus by throwing in, "Can you define 'woman'?" Dictionary.com has made that the word.We have to be super careful when we go into a lexical space like this, because it's really easy to hand some awful people ammunition, and when that happens, it really is to the detriment of the community.I looked at this and I said to myself, "Oh, no." Am I the only one that felt that way?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.My first reaction was just very naïve and stupid and was like, "I'm a woman." Ooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then I was like, "Wait.Why?" And then I thought, "Oh, it's because everyone is upset that transwomen exist and they want to talk about it and they want to go to a dictionary to find the truth and then beat it over the head of someone else." This is maybe where we need to remind people.I don't think many people listen to our show, but maybe in general, dictionaries try to record what is a cultural consensus and what is a convention, not what is reality.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're right, it's dictionary fights all over again.Like homer was a fairly benign version of that, but this is kind of bad and we have to be super careful when we're stomping around.It's the same with pilled.We had red pilled after the Matrix movie when somebody had become based…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Seeing the reality behind reality and how the cabal really pulls the strings and whatever.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Blah, blah, blah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's being pilled.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then I saw black pilled and now it's kind of just throwing any random thing in.Like if I've been playing a lot of Zelda, I could say that I've been Nintendo pilled.I'm random thing pilled.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, you can?
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is a tweet by our pal, Rikker Dockum, who mentioned this and was asking the American Dialect Society, "Hey, is pilled on your radar?Because this is coming up." If people responded to say, "You know what?When you're coopting language from the alt right, even in this way, it's dangerous because, yes, it mocks it and in some ways it can remove its power, but it can also signal boost it.It can give that language validity and it can take their language and mainstream it." Again, we have to be pretty careful when we're stomping around in this area.Sometimes, the use-mentioned distinction, whether you're using a word or whether you're simply mentioning it, that can get lost.
• linkBen Ainslie - I…one of the…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - At the same time, I…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hey.It's Ben.Hang on.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben is here.Daniel said that…
• linkBen Ainslie - We've already done the thing where you and I talked over each other.So, that's good.That the very first thing we did was…that's our way, that's our vibe, that's our style.What I was going to say on the appropriating language from the right side of things is that another reason it's so dangerous is because you can never predict what the rabid monkey pile is going to do.Like, sometimes you disarm a thing completely by appropriating it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dark Brandon.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.You can take a thing that they're using and it kind of feels like maybe that's what's happening with pilled here.Like if I've been Nintendo pilled because I've played too much Zelda, that for me, very much robs that thing of any cache or power or any of that kind of stuff.But because 4Chan is just a bunch of just awful humans, you never know when it's going to turn into Pizzagate, where a random, humorous thing will actually be appropriated to the point where it creates a conspiracy theory that hundreds of thousands of people believe, and they use it as a basis for behavior like January 6th.That's also why I find it really dangerous.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because there's this conspiracy belief that's really weird, which is like, "They're mocking us.They're putting it in plain sight so that they're mocking us because we don't understand." If you ironically use something, they might be like…Oh, God, it's so many layers deep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No bad publicity kind of thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that, very much so.Again, maybe we're giving words too much power.Like, maybe we're not the actors here anyway.All right, I'm getting down a rabbit hole.Let's go to the next one.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is everyone aware that Hedvig went to a Nobel party last night?We all know this?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They are.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, cool.They have contextual information for why she might be all over the place.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm a bitcrosstalk, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cool, cool, cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're just happy to have you.Let's go to the non-English words.A lot of these were suggested by Diego, who has been finding and unearthing a lot of these, but there are lots of other people.This is the part where I want you to unmute and just jump in if you get the chance because this is not my area of expertise.Russian, according to the Moscow Times, which is not a Russian state organism, their word was voyna, which is war.And that's how you know that it's not a Kremlin jam.
• linkchuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - Because it's not a special operation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right, exactly.The mobilizatsiya, mobilization and relokatsiya, relocation, which is the word for a draft, but they didn't want to call it a draft.That's the Russian Word of the Year, according to the Moscow Times.Is it Moscow for English speakers or Mos-kov?Because I just call it Moskova.Moscow or Mos-kov?What do you say?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Diego, you're muted.
• linkARIAFLAME - Moscow.
• linkDiego - I think cow, Moscow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's a Moscow, Idaho, that I grew up near.So now, I'm eternally confused between the two.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, because the one in Idaho, that thumping heartbeat of culture, industry, and everything else is every bit as relevant as the capital of Russia.laughsIt's an American approach, Daniel…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello to all our friends in Moscow.We know you're there.Thank you.Let's go to German.
• linkBen Ainslie - That was addressed to the Idahoans as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The Idahoans.I actually was only referring to the Idahoans.Hello, Idaho.German, the word was zeitenwende, which is epical change.Epical change.It was named the German Word of the Year, according to Deutsche Welle.Any comments?
• linkBen Ainslie - What does epical change mean?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Epical, the kind of change that happens once in an epic.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh.
• linkDiego - I also saw it as era-defining change or even turning point when I looked it up on Google Translate.But, of course, related to the Ukraine war.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Lots of that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know if English uses that word as much as German and Swedish, just epoch.Like, "This is the beginning of a new epoch."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ee-poch.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ee-poch.
• linkARIAFLAME - unintelligible [00:35:10
• linkBen Ainslie - Or if like me, you want to sound like a total wanker at a party, yes.
• linkDiego - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think this must be one of those things where it's an only Redditism for me.It's one of my Persephones, ee-pical, epical.I don't know, sorry, Hedvig.
• linkLord Mortis - You might say era.I think era has an equivalent meaning.
• linkDiego - That's what I was going to say.In Spanish, we say época for era.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on.Margareth.We've got one from Norwegian.
• linkMargareth - Okay, well, so the Word of the Year over here is krympflasjon, which is the Norwegian word for shrinkflation.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkMargareth - crosstalk-good word, because that's happening all over the place at the moment, where prices are rising generally, and we just don't notice what food brands are supermarkets are doing.They're quietly downsizing packaging or downsizing popular brands and not lowering the prices or the prices are the same or even higher.And it's very sneaky.They sometimes repackage as well, so they make it look new.We don't really notice because we buy the stuff that we always buy.We are shopping mainly the same every week, isn't it?
• linkMargareth - There was this guy who bought eggs at a supermarket chain called Kiwi here in Norway.He just bought the pack of eggs, as he usually does.He went home and he thought, "There's something funny about this." He checked his receipt.He compared it to the previous week, and then he noticed that the pack of eggs that was usually 18 eggs had now been downsized to 12 eggs.crosstalkThis has been going on for a while.There was this financial expert who commented on this story, which reached the media, and it turned out that the price of an egg had risen by 74% and nobody noticed until this guy thought, "I have to check what's going on here, there's something funny."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sneaky.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can I ask Margareth, is shrinkflation, as the transliteration, specifically about groceries and their size changing, is that what it's related to?Or is it also an equivalent for what we have in English, stagflation?So, stagnation and inflation.
• linkMargareth - I think they're slightly different.Mostly food products, food brands, but any popular brand, I think, it can refer to, and it's been happening for a while.And it's not just in this country.I mean, it's happened…I've seen examples from the US and from the UK, chocolate bars shrinking and the price going up.
• linkMargareth - crosstalk
• linkPerson - I think the idea of the shrinkflation is basically that you keep the same price…it's inflation, but it's hidden because you keep the same price, but you reduce the amount versus the normal inflation is the same amount of goods, the price is higher.It's this trick of hiding the process, that's the shrinkflation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm glad you mentioned stagflation, Ben, because stagflation is one that came up a lot in the 70s during the economic crisis.Usually, recession and inflation are considered seesawing off of each other, but sometimes you get both and that's stagflation.But now, we're seeing lots of things like shrinkflation, suckflation, all kinds of different kinds of flations.Flation is really becoming a productive morpheme.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
• linkMargareth - Yeah.That's what I found interesting as well, that these new words keep popping up with flation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you very much.Let's move on to the Danish Word of the Years.Ditte, you've been on the case for this one.
• linkDITTE - Yes, it was just chosen on the 16th live on a radio show here.Previous years I haven't listened in, I've just read in the newspapers afterwards what it was.It seems like quite an interesting process where first, all kinds of members of the public nominated words, and then they have a committee of five members that then all chose 10 words, and then they chose those words that at least two of the committee took, and that was 12 words, then each of the committee got to have two wildcards they brought, and then they did different things to narrow it down.What we ended up with was the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, spelled in the new Ukrainian way instead.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkDITTE - crosstalkThat's more based in Russian.
• linkcrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - K-Y-
• linkBen Ainslie - -I-V?
• linkDITTE - I-V.K-Y-I-V.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I will find a copy of both in Ukrainian.I'll slap them up in post on this video.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just know that Norwegian has a special spelling, so I was thinking maybe you'd spice it up somehow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesA worthy competitor.
• linkDITTE - A lot of the runners-up had to do with energy crisis thing.There was energy crisis, there was likeunintelligible 00:41:03, which means basically electricity shame.Also, just shame with a hyphen in front to show that it has become very productive.We're ashamed of a lot of things among those, how much electricity we use.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig, flygskam was one from a while ago.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Same…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Flight shame.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I had a word, flygskam.Yeah.The opposite is tagskryt, like train bragging.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - I love that.Like chug a brag.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chuckles
• linkDITTE - I think the reasoning for choosing Kyiv in the end was both to show some support for Ukraine, but also because that's kind of what started the energy crisis, that's a lot of the other words to do with.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.It really does kind of combine those.Wow.All right.The Swedish Word of the Year hasn't been announced yet.It's going to be announced on 27th December, apparently, so we will have that one for our next episode in January.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, the Swedish custom is to not announce one word, but to announce a list.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so democratic.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - But socialistically so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have opinions about the way this goes on but recently, the picking of this has gone to a newspaper, Språktidningen, which I've written in and where I like the editor.laughsSo, I think maybe it'll be better.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, Hedvig, what is Swedish for published brag?
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - The word in South Africa is, according to The Pan South African Language Board, is load shedding.That's the English one.There were others.Load shedding refers to the way that there's not enough energy in the grid, and so the power board decides that some people just won't get power so that the whole thing doesn't go down, and it's been a whole thing.There have been guards stationed to power stations to avoid damage and problems.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Japanese Word of the Year, this one suggested by River.River, are you around?We weren't sure if River was going to be here or not.Diego, do you want to help us out on this one?
• linkDiego - Sure.Yeah.It looks like word in Japan, the word that they've chosen is actually named after a baseball player from the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, that's the name of the team.So, the word is Murakami-sama.The gentleman's last name is Murakami and then, the sama honorific, I think, is the equivalent of, like, mister.So, it's like Mr.Murakami.And, yeah, he's been very popular.
• linkBen Ainslie - From my anime weeb days, I feel like sama might be more high order than that.My understanding is sama is more deferential.You would say sama to a person that you admire, like "Sir" in the knighted sense kind of thing.
• linkDiego - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkARIAFLAME - It is definitely more honorific than san.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkDiego - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Which makes sense because it sounds like they're kobeying this guy.That's kind of how the name is being used.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is this being used in other contexts besides the person's name?When someone says, "Kobe," when they're throwing a basketball, that's the thing that happens.Is this being extended, I wonder?I should know this, skimped on the research for this one.
• linkDiego - Do you mean the sama honorific?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I mean the name.
• linkcrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's just unusual to like…
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, if someone does something really cool, just like teenagers go like, "Murakami-sama."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.There are a lot of people we all take a note about this year, and none of the other ones they made it to…like Elon Musk wasn't a Word of the Year.
• linkBen Ainslie - Imagine that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I'm not serious.
• linkBen Ainslie - When you havecrosstalkso well, that your name, just your name becomes the Word of the Year.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.That's pretty the top…
• linkBen Ainslie - Icrosstalka real good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -buzzword.
• linkDiego - Yeah.It says specifically here, he's posing for a picture after his nickname Murakami-sama was selected as Japan's top buzzword in 2022.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a play?
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't know if that applies as a nickname.Like if people were calling me like Mr.Ainslie.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Sir Ainslie.
• linkDiego - Well, apparently his name already has a play on words with the word for God.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah.Very good.
• linkDiego - crosstalk-somehow it works on to it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Very good.Let's go on to the…Oh, River also mentioned the character, the Kanji of the Year, which was "sen," meaning war.So, that's worth a mention as well.Switzerland, we had a lot of shortage-related words.What do you do in a Word of the Year contest when you have four official languages?You pick four.The German one is strommangellage.Hedvig, help me out with it.Energy shortage.Strommange…somebody who speaks…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It wasn't…Oh, Strommangellage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I did it right.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Strommangellage.
• linkBen Ainslie - Come on, Daniel, you idiot.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesSorry.Then, French.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Energy shortage.Boycotter.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Boycotter in French.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, sorry.Boycotter.And Penuria shortage in Italian.And then, Mancanza, shortage in Rhaeto-Romansch, I guess.
• linkBen Ainslie - What wouldcrosstalkI think someone I'm not super abreast of Swedish domestic news.Sorry, Swiss.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Swiss.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's okay.It happens all the time.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsI know, but not to me.What were the Swiss running out of?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Energy, I guess.
• linkDiego - Gas.Petroleum products, I would imagine.
• linkBen Ainslie - Just same as everyone else.Got it.I was just checking to see if it was like cheese.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Swiss are cheeky.Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky country.I know that usually their strategy is that when France produces too much energy, they pump up all their water to a high point in their mountains, and then when they run out of energy, they let that water down and they use the hydroenergy.
• linkLord Mortis - That's not cheeky.If France doesn't want to build a big battery, that's their fault.
• linklaughter
• linkLord Mortis - Icrosstalkknow.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - Spot the engineer in the room.
• linklaughter
• linkcrosstalk
• linkARIAFLAME - When you've got the space and the height for pump storage, go ahead, use it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, Hedvig making enemies left, right, and center.I'm loving it.
• linkLord Mortis - Just please don't inundate forests to do it.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on to the German Youth Word of the Year, which was smash or smashing, which could mean starting something with someone, picking someone up, or having sex with someone.That's kind of a borrowing of the English usage, as in smash or pass.
• linkBen Ainslie - What a productive word, because we really only use it the one way, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, smash or pass.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, but that just means sex.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, but in English, we also use it to mean that you were very successful at something like, "I smashed it."
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, true.Yeah.I forget how my own language works.Thanks for reminding me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Remember, every English word is polysemous, except for the word polysemous.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is such a linguist joke.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I found out to my dismay.I said, "Every English word is polysemous to someone.Why are you complaining about literally?" And they said, "What about polysemous?" I looked it up and I said, "No, actually, that's just one meaning."
• linkBen Ainslie - It's just got onecrosstalkright there.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The German second place word for youth was bodenlos, which means bottomless or groundless, and that means super bad."Ah, it was bottomless."
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, like abyssal.I like that.That's so evocative.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I know.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like it."How was your time?Have you ever seen the movie The Abyss?" It was like that."
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was like that.Except my life.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Signed languages.I was looking for any signed language, any Word of the Year in any signed language.Got a nice tweet from the Swiss Federation of the Deaf saying that they were working on it.So, that's coming up.On our next episode, we look forward to presenting all the ones we didn't get to the Swedish one, any sign languages that we can find.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also, the American Dialect Society Words of the Year will be nominating ours for the American dialect vote, and we'll get to that.Before we get to those, it's time for a game.Who feels like a game?
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like a game.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The game is Related or Not.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A game?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's time to play.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was listening to a bit ofunintelligible [00:50:28with my daughter.One of their popular songs is called Haven.And she read it as "heaven" because she's six.It's not heaven, it's haven, she's like, "what's the difference?" I had to explain that, and then I started wondering, are they related or are they not?So, here we go.We are launching a poll, heaven and haven.Are they related or are they not?Now is your chance to vote.
• linkBen Ainslie - I went hard.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I see the poll results, but I don't…can't…oh, because I'm an admin.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm not.But don’t worry, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I see you guys voting, but I can't vote.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, now is your chance.Why don't you tell me what you think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I think they're not related.
• linkBen Ainslie - gaspsThis is good, because I voted they were, and it means one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, but did you have a reason?I know that there might be some old Norse floating around here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Just like the Germanic ones I know, I think they are a bit different, and…I don't know.I know.Well, the reason for them being related is that when you…like haven as in a port, and you go to heaven, as in you come to port, you come home.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Home, yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe I've been watching too much Rings of Power.In Tolkienverse, you sail to heaven.Like in a boat, you sail to heaven.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm not entirely convinced that that will be the explanation behind the words that have a root history of hundreds of years.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, and then I thought to myself, "That's not a very good reason.So, they must not be related," because I couldn't think of a better one.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Well, I'll end this poll.As you can see, the results were 7 out of 10 of you said, "Yeah, they're related."
• linkBen Ainslie - One of those doesn't count because I had to vote twice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, you did.Okay, fair enough.And the correct answer, they are unrelated.Boo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Boo.Boo.Ah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Heaven comes from Old English "heofon," the home of God, probably from Proto-Germanic, hebn.Haven is port, and that's an archaic sense of port in English, seems to come from a different Proto-Germanic word, hafno.So, not related.Thank you.
• linkBen Ainslie - This iscrosstalkgarbage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now it's timechucklesto reveal the Because Language Word of the Week of the Year.We're going to count them down from number 10.Actually, number nine, because there's a three by tie for ninth place.Love to hear your comments on any of these.Anyone.One of them was desire path, a well-worn trail, maybe through a grassy area that people use because it's more convenient than established paths.That was a while ago.We had that one.Another ninth-place finisher was Platty Jubes, an alternation of Platinum Jubilee, the 70th Anniversary of the Accession of Queen Elizabeth.
• linkBen Ainslie - My goodness.That happened this year?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - My God, kind of a lot's happened since then.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know.And also, she died.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, that was part of the kind of a lot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's actually only a small part of the kind of a lot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's the same.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The joke on Twitter was that Platty Jubes was followed closely by Statty Funes.
• linkchuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, and also in ninth place, linguistic dropbear, a made-up term that Australians may jokingly represent as actual Aussie slang to outsiders, satirizing the unusual or charmingly silly nature of Australian slang, named for the mythical animal that drops on you when you're walking around under trees that doesn't exist.
• linkBen Ainslie - What a bloody fleevalflo, eh?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know, right?I've heard that just yesterday.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, I'm fleevalfloing all over the place.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Number eight, goblin mode, with 28 votes, a tendency to stay inside all day wearing comfy clothes and forgoing hygiene.That was the Oxford winner, but it only came in at number eight.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can I tend an addendum to goblin mode?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Please.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like that definition no longer fully encapsulates the semantic space that that phrase occupies.I don't know.Agree or disagree, friends, but I've seen a lot of people using goblin mode to basically mean unashamedly nerding out on things or just being really quite…like having a lot of…So, for instance, I've seen people say, like, "Ah, time to go wade pooling," and then they go along the foreshore and like, "Oh my God, look at it.It's Olympic.Look at it.Oh, this is kelp." They're in goblin mode, but they're outside doing things still, so I don't know if they're purely inside the nature of it.
• linkARIAFLAME - So, kind of feral.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, kind of being feral, but…
• linkARIAFLAME - Enthusiastically feral.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.Exactly.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hyperfocused.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like the most endearing form of positive goblin representation.These are goblin artifices.People who are making things that splode and being really excited about it, that sort of thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Well, that'd be a shit.
• linkARIAFLAME - That lasted about five minutes, but yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that kind of activity, like really being enthusiastic and really into something maybe what we would call nerd out to be nerdy into it, it's a very funny semantic space.In Sweden for a while, I think it might still be a thing, we would use the word for gay men.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If you're really into…sorry, I banged my…
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah.You're going to have to connect those dots for me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - For example, if you really like Nintendo, you could be a Nintendo word for gay man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, my gosh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Even if you're a woman.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - What level of word for gay man?Are we talking like vague…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - A slur?
• linkBen Ainslie - Are we talking…what?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.I say as a non-gay man, but it's vague, which is neutral.
• linkARIAFLAME - Some sort of level of otaku.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Some people say, "I'm gay for this thing."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, more like that.
• linkARIAFLAME - It doesn't mean gay.It has that sort of level of enthusiasm, but also possibly a little too enthusiastic and let's go with it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, you're right on that social gray zone line of like, "Oh, you have a lot of swords," like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I saw someone use it for someone who is really into knives.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's exactly where my brain went.When you walk into someone's house and they have lots of my little ponies, and you're like, "Okay, you have made choices."
• linkDaniel Midgley - "You are offputtingly enthusiastic about this thing."
• linkBen Ainslie - Not offputtingly.I try really hard to be like, "You like this thing more than anything I've ever liked.But that's cool."
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's great.Let's go on to number seven.The 'something urge to' denoting a tendency, the masculine urge to give your opinion.Or this is a real tweet.The feminine urge to open a coffee shop that's also a library and bakery and a floral shop.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am currently in the millennial female urge to paint any wooden object in my house another color because I bought a bunch of acrylics.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hey, that's lovely.I really like what you're doing there.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're so crafty.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - By the way, that is absolutely version of goblin mode.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm not even sure I'm good at it.I just have to.
• linkBen Ainslie - That’s 100% what goblin mode is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God, I'm such a goblin then.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This was on the list for the American Dialect Society a couple of years ago.So, we're a little behind on it, but it's nice to see it again.There was a tie for number five, "acting one's wage." I was very pleased to see that quiet quitting didn't make it that far, acting one's wage did, I think it's a much better term.Setting work-life boundaries while fulfilling one's work duties, and no more.Thanks to Colleen for this one.Colleen, you're the winner, you're number five.
• linkColleen - Yay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Pew, pew, pew, pew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, also tied for five, precariat, a class of workers who face job insecurity.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm.The fifth position is very labor uniony.I like it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I like it too.Okay.Then, there was number four, ussy or us-sy.The combining form used to mean any orifice canal or opening.For example, "There's only one electrussy in this room."
• linkBen Ainslie - You monsters, all of you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, that's just such a…We think this is funny.We think this is great.No one used this seriously.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, jokingly, perhaps it started with bussy for your anus, your boy pussy or butt pussy.Went from there.I noticed that we put up a poll once, thanks to Lena for this, what should be the word for the hole on the puppet through which the puppeteer inserts their hand?My whole poll choices were the Elmussy, the Kermussy, the Lambchussy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The winning answer at 62% was the last one, "Unsee this."
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, it's got its fans.For example,crosstalkfor the last many years, the Sesame Street ending credits theme has Grover doing a really enthusiastic dance.I am in the habit of whenever that's on, I run up and I do the Grover dance.Let me tell you, I put my whole grovussy into that dance.Okay, that was number four.
• linkBen Ainslie - This gives me such an ick.You know how most people respond to moist?That is absolutely how I respond to this-
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the appeal.
• linkBen Ainslie - -productive.And it's just awful.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I want to say that this one…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - That's the worst part.It's not that you're talking about sex stuff.Sex stuff is great.It's this word.It's bad.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This one was doing okay on the vote, and then suddenly, for no reason, it started racking up tons of votes very quickly on Twitter.I don't know why.So, let's go on.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow.It was the most certainly a racist thing.Sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think there's just a lot of people who like it, but they like to make people squirm in that moist way.Number three, we're down to the top three.Are you ready?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Main character syndrome.A person is said to have this if they treat others as merely supporting characters in their lives.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can I add a postscript to that one?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Please.
• linkBen Ainslie - Something I have seen in the youth of my job.NPC has become a very common burn to…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was one of ours as well, but it wasn't as popular, but it didn’t makecrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Non-playing character.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Non-playable character.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like NPC and main character syndrome are just working together, and these kids are just like, "Oh, sir, no.That's such an NPC move, sir.You can't do that."
• linkDaniel Midgley - "I'm not going to let some NPC tell me to get vaccinated and wear a mask."
• linkBen Ainslie - "I'm teaching you things." "Oh, yeah, like an NPC." I'm like, "Okay, fair, I guess, because in a videogame, the teacher is not going to be the main character."
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, you're going to be somebody who just does the same thing over and over again and bumps into things.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But sometimes, a couple of years ago, I was in Stockholm.It was very foggy, and I needed directions.I was walking around, and it was that kind of fog that you have in video games when the graphic isn't rendering and they're trying to save on your GPU.I walked up to a woman with a dog, and I was like, "Do you know the directions to this place?" And she was like, "I do not." And then, she kept standing there.And then, I walked up to another person, and I was like, "Do you know the direction?" They were like, "I think it's there to the left." They were all just standing like an NPC in a game.They were just standing in their spots.I walked up to them and was like, "Hello, I'm a traveler.I need…"
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, is there a nontrivial chance that you're just recounting an acid story to us right now?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Have you mistaken a videogame for real life?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkBen Ainslie - YoucrosstalkStockholm.
• linkARIAFLAME - Either that or you wandered into a flash mob.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, exactly.That's what I'm thinking.Let's be NPCs.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It just happens sometimes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Did any of them take an arrow to the knee?
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.Also, I'm just telling you, I was in the fog, and I asked two people for directions, and you're all like, "You were on acid."
• linkBen Ainslie - No.Hang on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think you were in a flash mob.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, you were in the fog asking people for directions, and then they were weird robots answering me and serving no other function.That's the story you told, my friend.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on.Sorry, AriaFlame.
• linkARIAFLAME - Well, if you don't actually interact with the NPCs, you don't get any further in the quest, that I can tell you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There you go.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Number two, Hedvig, this is one of yours, 'not'.Yay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Used to that a situation is undesirable or embarrassing.Example, "Not my best friend getting into NFTs." Or other examples?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This actually happens.Not me recounting something I've experienced when people ask if it's acid.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because that happens surprisingly often.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like that you had to preface that statement with, "This is something that I've actually experienced," like we all didn't just experience it…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two minutes ago.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like 35 seconds ago.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but more than that time.I'm trying to say that it's happened more than a time.Like one time I was very dehydrated in an open mine,crosstalkand there was a pile of sand, and I got this idea in my head.I had no alcohol, I swear.No MDMA.No, no, no, nothing.There was a pile of sand, and in my head, I got this idea that the sand was sentientBen laughsand that the sand loved me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aw.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, you're right, Hedvig.The problem is with the world.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I just like sat down in the sand, I had a great time.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's certainly not with you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s lovely.
• linkLord Mortis - As an ex-driver, that tracks perfectly with the stories I've heard at comedown parties.Perfectly.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like you'll be at a urinal with someone-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it was lovely.
• linkBen Ainslie - -and within the end of the pee, you'll be like, "We're doing it, man.We're traveling to Europe.It's happening, let's go do this."
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesLet's start a podcast.
• linkARIAFLAME - Tiktokunintelligible [01:06:05.Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, it's really nice.I just sat down in the sand and dug myself into the sand.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, drugs are really nice.That's why people take them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No drugs.I think the things that happen in people's brains when they are on drugs sometimes just happens in my brain.
• linkBen Ainslie - I believe you.I believe that is the thing that's happening.
• linkARIAFLAME - I lost track.What word were we on?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We were on the 'not'.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, sorry.Not, not.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was number two.Which means that we're up to the winner.The Because Language Word of the Week of the Year, oh, and it's one of Hedvig's.
• linkBen Ainslie - Boo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - The word is "yes." The word is yes to nonpolar questions.Using yes as answer to questions that are not yes and no to meanunintelligible [01:06:58to a great extent.Example, how much garlic is appropriate?Yes, which means lots.Let's hear your examples.I got an example, but I want to hear yours.Has anyone said yes to you for a nonpolar question?
• linkLord Mortis - Should we get that cookie or the other cookie?Yes.
• linkLord Mortis - chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, that's an interesting one.That's kind of a computer science joke, right?Because if you get both of the cookies, it still valuates to true because it wasn't exclusive or.
• linkLord Mortis - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - The way I see it used is when it can also be like with bad things or good and bad things.People were like, "So, did you fix the car or were you stuck out there for hours?" "Yes."
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - Clearly, something happened.I'm saying that, yes, the situation resolved in some way or another, but it fucking sucked.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I was at a gig with my sons and my pal, Mark.We went to Khruangbin.I don't know if anyone is into Khruangbin or saw them when they came to Perth.They had to delay for COVID.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hey, Hedvig, what's Swedish for hipster brag?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Shut up.in a hippie toneThey're just a good band, man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hipster skryta, yeah, hipster brag.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don’t know if you guys know this band, Schravahuvantag, it's pretty underground.You wouldn't know it.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're a three-piece, and they do kind of tie-inspired funk and stuff, and they're really good.But they did a cover and they started with INXS's Need You Tonight.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Did you say three peas as in like peas in a pod?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Three piece.Three-piece band.I'm telling a story.And not Hedvig interrupting me.They did Need You Tonight, but only for eight bars, and they broke into eight bars of Back in Black, and then they did just, like, 20 different covers.There was Tom Tom Club with Genius of Love.It became a trivia contest.Could you identify all the references?My son leaned over to me and said, "Which cover did Khruangbin do?" "Yes."
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, there we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.Yeah, good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, that was a spontaneous usage from a millennial…No, from a Zoomer.There you go.Congratulations to yes for being the…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, is he a Zoomer?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because I think he is.If you're born in 1998, are you a Zoomer or are you Millennial?Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - '88?
• linkBen Ainslie - '98.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - '98, 10 years younger than me.Yeah, I was confused.I don't know.But can you ask him if he thinks…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - He's a Zillennial.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm trying to see if I can get all Zoomers to think I'm cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.He thinks you're cool.He thinks you're great.Let me just say…
• linkBen Ainslie - He's definitely a millennial.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I did a little hunt to see which terms were disproportionately popular on Twitter and Facebook because Twitter, Facebook, and Discord were our things.I did a ratio.I took Twitter and divided by Facebook votes.Higher numbers mean more popular on Twitter.Here were the things that were disproportionately popular on Twitter."No because." "No, because who's following me out of the blue like this?" Swedengate.Crumb maiden, someone who supports existing power structures.Ussy and gender anarchy.Those were the five biggest ones that were most popular on Twitter.Oh, Twitter.No wonder you are the way you are.The most disproportionately popular on Facebook were Sharkcano, an underwater volcano that sharks are used to.Precariat, what's going on there?A-lago, a combining form, meaning some kind of scandal compared to gate.Quiet quitting and main character syndrome.So, those are the Facebook popular ones.Facebook, you're a bunch of basic bitches.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Those were the Because Language Words of the Week of the Year.Let's give him a big hand.Woo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, before we get to the words we missed, which many of our friends are bringing us, let's do Related or Not, Volume II.Here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I've got my thinking hat.
• linkBen Ainslie - My time to shine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - How do I do this?All right.The question.Ambush and an actual bush.Does the word 'bush' have anything to do with ambushing someone?Yes or no?Ben, Hedvig, any ideas?Instance?
• linkBen Ainslie - I am voting no twice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Interesting.Not going to mix it up.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, if I vote yes or no, then I just vote nothing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Hedvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, you could jump out of a bush right when you ambush someone.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You could do that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, I'm going to say they're related.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalkopposite point.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, we have…Oh, I think there's still one vote outstanding.There were 10 last time out of 10.So, I'm going to…no, good.Okay, I'm going to end the poll.Looks like, so far totes related, 44%.Nuh-uh, not related, 56%.There you go.Screenshot.And the actual answer, they are related.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, this is fucking bullshit.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - This sucks.
• linkAriflame - 100% fail.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig, you're right twice.laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - I do not like that phrase coming out of your mouth, Daniel.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ambush comes from old French 'embusche', to hide or what you've got is in and then bush, which is wood, bosque, bois, and so on.What you're doing is you are embushing yourself.The 'em' as in 'in', so that you can either jump out at someone or else you're luring someone into the bush.So, they are in fact related.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Fun, fun.Okay, we'll have another one later on.Now, it's time for the words we missed.The one that Aristemo suggested was a blank piece of paper.No words on it at all.What better Word of the Year than no words?The context here is this happened in multiple countries, in China, in Russia, in authoritarian places, protesters would hold up blank pieces of paper and then get hustled into police vans.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's right.I remember that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A way of protesting against the absence of freedom of expression.It's a very good way of civil disobedience.It's like, "I can get arrested just by saying nothing at all.That's how terrible the situation is where I'm at." I think it's very effective.
• linkARIAFLAME - Very easy to meme on photo afterwards.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is why I don't hold up piece of paper.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalk-or successful success.Who knows?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, another one, spicy.This, I wasn't really aware of until Hedvig pointed it out.It came up on a few episodes.Spicy take.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - You've never heard of this, Daniel?What?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I heard.The first time I heard it was on our show.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben, you and I are on TikTok, and he is not.
• linkBen Ainslie - I guess.Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's lots of uses.I follow a lot of cat rescues.So, kittens who are-
• linkBen Ainslie - Spicy kittens, yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -spicy kittens are kittens who are like when you try and grab them, they're likemimics spicy kittens.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ooh, it's a spicy one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Spicy cough, we had earlier.Spicy as in little bit like erotic.Like, "Oh, that person has a spicy profession.They're a sex worker." That kind of thing happens as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And of course, spicy takes that might be controversial or unpopular.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good.Energy.The word 'energy' has been used in lots of contexts, but we've seen "big dick energy." But now I'm seeing things…I mean, I've been seeing this all year, but I didn't notice it enough to put it as a word.Talking about something having the same energy as something else meaning it's kind of in the same mode, it's kind of got the same vibe.
• linkBen Ainslie - Vibe.Yeah.I wonder if…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Someone at the Guardian…
• linkBen Ainslie - …has been sitting higher as well because of actual energy stuff, like literal usage of energy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Someone in The Guardian said that John Cleese had divorced energy, and I just…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, God.He has ferocious divorce energy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I agree.John Cleese has divorced energy.I was thinking the other day about trying to explain meme…trying to explain the kind of infinite culture that I am a part of to my mother, because I'm realizing that I was thinking maybe it's a very complicated in-group joke, that's maybe how I could explain memes.Sometimes people take to Vines, like meme videos and say, "Oh, these two have the same energy," and it's so conceptual and abstract but I really agree.Has this ever happened to you?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I Abe Simpson in situations like that.Lord Mortis chucklesI 100%, when people are like, "Oh, look at these two clips that give off the same energy," and they're completely bafflingly different, I'm just like, "I used to know what it was.Then they changed what it is.And now what I am isn't it.What it is scary and weird, and it'll happen to you."
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I still know what they're talking about, but it's very vibey.It's very hard to…what's a good one?Have you seen the thing, Picasso?I like it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - How do you explain that?What energy is that?
• linkBen Ainslie - Just baffled, but genuinely open and supportive.That's how I read that particular thing.As it gets memed further and further, I find with all memetic transposition.In my experience, it doesn't get richer.It actually just gets simpler.As like, "Okay, Picasso, I like it." It kept going and going, it eventually just meant, "This is a good thing." That was the level of semantic depth that it had.I think we've baffled the Gen-Xer.Should we pull it back?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.chucklesAnywaycrosstalkenergy, yeah, culture can very conceptual and abstract.
• linkDaniel Midgley - At this stage, it's too late for me to find out.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - The suffix, "le", a productive suffix for any daily online game with results you can share with friends.I expect this one to go a long way in the American Dialect Society vote.
• linkBen Ainslie - My favorite, by the way, doesn't have an "le" at the end, though.I'm all about the Framed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Love me some Framed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm glad they didn't call it Movidle.
• linkBen Ainslie - There is a Movidle.It's a different thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Mid, meaning mediocre.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is very popular amongst teenagers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's a bit mid.Am I using that right?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, but that's okay.If any teenager heard you say that, they would just be like,chuckles in disagreement
• linkDaniel Midgley - I've got a tweet here from Sam Altman."Biggest indicator of a mid company is spending tons of energy," energy, "on things other than making their core products/service better." So mid tier, mediocre.
• linkBen Ainslie - chucklesI love that the example we found is clearly not a young person talking about business of all things.
• linkLord Mortis - He could be a young liberal or something.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah, I suppose that's true.
• linkLord Mortis - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't follow them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig, go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben talked about there's Wordle and all these games, the thing you talked about previously.And then, I was like, "What the fuck is Framed that you mentioned?" I went to it, and I played it and I got it in one guess." The first…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nice.No spoilers.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Everybody.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's going to happen.Yeah, well, they gave you an easy one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, hmm.Okay, I'm going to think about it.Anyway, here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry, Ben.We're the worst today.I'm the worst today.
• linkDaniel Midgley - River suggested aro-ace, aromantic asexual.Is it aero-ace or arrow-ace?Help me out.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don’t know either.
• linkDiego - I believe it's aero-ace.
• linkARIAFLAME - I think it's aero-ace.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "The term has kind of exploded," says River, and everybody is talking about it, and lots of people are learning about the term.Diego, oomer.What's this?
• linkDiego - Yes.So, I've come across doomer.I can't remember exactly what the context was, but it kind of led me down the rabbit hole of maybe oomer being a productive morpheme.Most popularly, we have Boomer and Zoomer, and then we have doomer is the one that I had that was new to me.It's pretty much people who are on the internet looking at…or worried about things-
• linkBen Ainslie - Like dream scrolling…crosstalk
• linkDiego - -like overpopulation.Right, exactly.There's a bit of an overlap with that.On Urban Dictionary, they also mentioned gloomer and bloomer and stuff like that.There's a few of them out there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Those are specifically about climate change.People who are pessimistic about climate change.
• linkDiego - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkARIAFLAME - It's not that they're worried.It's just that they think, "Everything's going to hell and we can't do anything about it, and everything's going to be terrible."
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkcrosstalk
• linkDiego - Yeah, the alternate…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Just consume our way to the end.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not productive.Let's now share a recording from PharaohKatt, who brought one.And that's 'tire extinguisher'.Not fire extinguisher, but tire extinguisher.And I'll play that now.
• linkPharaohKatt - Hello, PharaohKatt here.The word I want to mention is 'tire extinguishers'.This is a term I first noticed in a Guardian article.Tire extinguishers are climate activists who have been deflating the tires of SUVs as a protest against high polluting vehicles.On one occasion, they apparently deflated the tires of over 900 SUVs across Europe and the US in one night.So, that term again is "tire extinguishers."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.Spicy.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsLook at you using the lingo of the young people.Well done.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm a quick learner, I'll tell ya.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What do you think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's a very specific and potentially quite limited use case.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I like to play on words with fire extinguisher and tire and extinguishing the tire.It's a funny play on words.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's also I hate big SUVs in inner cities.
• linkLord Mortis - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Fair.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I likecrosstalkpeople don’t have those.
• linkBen Ainslie - "But how am I supposed to get my kids to school?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think direct action is definitely something that is valid.You do have to ask yourself, are you taking action or are you just fucking with people's shit?
• linkBen Ainslie - Spot the SUV or not?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I do not have an SUV.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yes, I do.
• linkARIAFLAME - You have to also consider so how much extra energy and emissions are going to come from the replacement of all these bloody tires, because they're not going to get rid of the SUV, they're just going to get new tires.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Apparently, it's not slashing tires.It's sticking a lentil inside, leaving it there so that it deflates overnight.
• linkARIAFLAME - All right.Okay, so not actual…cool.
• linkLord Mortis - You get the valves, and you just stick something that wedges in the valve and just holds it openunintelligible 01:23:49.All the air pressure goes out.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Well, our last one that we missed was suggested by Adam.Adam, this one's for you.
• linkAdam - Yeah, this is prompt crafting, mostly spelled with a space, sometimes together.But as we know, originally such words are written with a space, but then sometimes they're allied.The last episode was about artificial intelligence, and this is now hugely popular.In some AI systems, the user inputs some text and gets some result back.For instance, in a text-to-image system like Midjourney, you can write something like "nice photo of Mick Jagger," but that's not very specific.So, you will get some results that aren't maybe such a great image.But then, you may write something like "Mick Jagger by David LaChapelle, 1970s." Then, you may get some images that may be good.But then, you can also write something like "1970s David LaChapelle's style, colorful fashion, high angle, full body shot of Mick Jagger, pose, shot on 70-millimeter film, award-winning editorial photography."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkAdam - Sometimes, you may overcraft or overprompt.You specify too many kind of details and the system doesn't know where to go and is trying to kind of merge too many concepts into one.But finetuning this and writing these prompts, well, that's sort of the prompt crafting.There are lots of blog posts about it, videos about it, people are kind of discovering.The really interesting thing is that these are often like visual artists who now are reading about…well, even what's a noun or what's a verb or what's an adjective, what's grammar, and they're sort of applying some linguistic knowledge to it.
• linkAdam - The other interesting thing is that some writers about this say learn prompt crafting for about a year because these input systems evolve and they become better.Something like ChatGPT, which was mentioned in the last episode, you can write much more freeform.You can write, "write a haiku about linguistics," and then you get "linguistic study, uncovering languages, depths, endless mysteries." But then you can start conversing with it and tell it, if you write something, "Oh, make it longer," "Oh, rephrase it." So then, you don't have to be so specific, and you don't have to learn this kind of particular grammar and syntax.But right now, prompt crafting is definitely trending.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's very cool.It reminds me a bit of Google Foo, like to be good at searching, because I've noticed that there are people who are not good at searching.I didn't know that until I saw people trying to search for solutions to problems they had.I was like, "That's not a good search phrase."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let me just share this.Adam, do you mind if I shared the images that you made of us?
• linkAdam - chucklesI don't mind at all.
• linkLord Mortis - crosstalkyet.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have not seen them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You gave us…there we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, that’s so…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That’s hilarious.I know that immediately.Oh, my God.What does it say on your t-shirt?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's that non-language that engines give you, isn't it?
• linkAdam - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This was from a photograph.How did you get this one, Adam?
• linkAdam - I think it was on the Facebook profile.There is one photo view where you have the Because Language t-shirt.This is an input image.You can also put an input image, and then you can say something like just "cute Pixar character" or…You can also mix it a bit, but it tries to infer a lot of the content from the image.Then, you can kind of modify, you can apply like a stylistic modifier to it via text.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, let's go to Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it's very cute.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aw.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And the prompt was "cute Pixar" in this prompt?It was from a photo…crosstalk
• linkAdam - I think yes.I think it was "cute Pixar young woman," but it was also using a photo of Hedvig that I found on the web.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That’s interesting.Maybe I should get glasses like that.
• linkLord Mortis - Adam posted the prompts in the Discord on December 14th at 01:53 PM Australian Western Standard.If you want to find them, go there.
• linkARIAFLAME - Which channel?
• linkLord Mortis - Oh, general.
• linkAdam - I think it was general, yeah.And then, there's one more.
• linkLord Mortis - I'm looking at them right now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What was Ben's prompt?Can you see it?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, God.
• linkLord Mortis - Ben's prompt was "as cute grumpy Pixar character, with studio microphone, 3D Pixar style …no glasses -beforeunintelligible 01:29:56.
• linklaughter
• linkLord Mortis - It's the best one.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - laughinglyOh, God.
• linkAdam - Well, the funny thing is that Midjourney learns from available images.Apparently, there's a lot of images with "studio microphone" that involve people who are singing, so they have their mouths open.When I didn't add the studio mic, then there was just a straight face or whatever.I also used like an old…from the Talk the Talk times, there were like a couple of shots in the Facebook profile back then with a red studio…in the radio studio.There was onecrosstalkimage of Ben.But when I added the "studio microphone," then it suddenly started doing the open mouth, and then I added "grumpy," and then it changed the expression.That was about a couple of iterations that was basically prompt crafting.With Ben, it was a bit more challenging because there were only like two photos or so that I could find.While with Daniel, he had more photos.So, basically the system was more flexible.I could pick a good candidate, like the one with a t-shirt.It's a back and forth with the system, and that's basically prompt crafting.That's iteration.It's very fascinating.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The letter 'c' should not exist.
• linklaughter
• linkARIAFLAME - I found it amazing that Daniel's prompt craft involved "happy," and I don't know that he looks that happy.
• linkAdam - laughsWell, yes.There's always a compromise.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel doesn't actually, I think, have that many pictures online of you smiling.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe, possibly.Not sure.
• linkAdam - But then, if you add something like laughing to that prompt, even with an image, then Midjourney will kind of force the Pixar character to laugh, and that can get very grotesque, but also kind of funny.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this has been a terrific journey through the World of Words of this Year.Were there any themes?Shortages, War.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Crisis, energy, war.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkcrosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - It doesn't sound like a fun time to be human based on the words that we've had this year.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I got to say, Word of the Year season is a lot like Christmas for me because sometimes it's like, "Ugh, already?" This year, I was looking forward to, I'm just really happy about both Words of the Year and Christmas for some reason.Like, "Oh, Goody, goody, goody.The new words are out." It's fun and it's silly.I had a chat with Mark Ellison, a linguist pal that's coming out pretty soon, but we talked about the whole Word of the Year phenomenon and how we have a repertoire and when we can extend our repertoire in fun ways.We like to do it, and Word of the Year gives us a chance to do that, except for all of the devastation and permanent crises and things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's also good sometimes to remember how the rest of society views this kind of academia.Most people view it as a fun way of summarizing the year.Like what happened this year, it was a lot of discussion about what it means to be a woman.We'll pick a woman, etc.I think about that sometimes, that for some of the people, we're like a bit of a spice to their rest of the society.They don't think about us all the time, but they think about us a little bit now.And it's cute, we're cute.We're a little cute spice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.As long as we can avoid Columbusing words, as long as we're honest about attribution and saying, "Hey, a lot of these words come from African American, English," or, "A lot of these words come from the gay, the queer community," or whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, thank you, everybody, for all the help that you gave us.Not just for bringing us words, but also for voting and for being here.This is a lot of fun.Let's get to some comments.
• linkDaniel Midgley - From Eve via email, hello@becauselanguage.com.Eve says, "In this week's episode, you all mentioned only being able to infix fuck into abso-fucking-lutely.I submit the example…"
• linkBen Ainslie - I believe I came up with an alternative.I want to put that out there.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You did.I think we're all having a collective brain fart about it because it's just like, "Uh, what's a good example?" Eve says, "I submit the example fan-fucking-tastic.It's my favorite swear to usecrosstalkwhere things are going wrong.Love the show," says Eve.
• linkBen Ainslie - We were sleeping on that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ugh, it was just…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We really were.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was at the end.We were tired.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I would like to submit that we're up to two now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two what?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, it's a productive pattern in the language if we've got two cases.I want more.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I believe that I gave an example where you could take a random word like Kalamunda, the name of a suburb, as long as it was metrically dense enough, and you can do it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I reckon you could do it with if you were frustratedly having to explain something to someone and you started off with, "Be-fucking-cause that's how it's got to be," something like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Un-fucking-believable or unbe-fucking-lievable, not sure.Alessandra, one of our newest patrons, says, "I've been recommended Talk the Talk by my Linguistics 101 professor.Now, I'm in my 7th semester and still listening.Because Language is my go-to linguistics podcast.My go-to podcast, actually.When I listen to it, I feel like I got my dose of world news."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, shit.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know.chuckles"I really want to second the person who praised you for the generativism episodes.By the way, I was learning precisely about that when they came out and they helped me so much sorting out my thoughts.I thought you might like this poem my brother, Daniel, prompted ChatGPT to write."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's long.Maybe just two stanzas.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.We'll put the whole thing up in our episode page for this episode.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Noam Chomsky’s ideas once held sway,
• linkDaniel Midgley - In the realm of linguistics they did play.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But times have changed and now it’s clear,
• linkDaniel Midgley - His theories are no longer held dear.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Once, his notion of a language innate
• linkDaniel Midgley - Seemed a groundbreaking idea, replete,
• linkDaniel Midgley - With evidence to support its claim.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But now, it seems, it’s lost its fame," and so on.
• linkBen Ainslie - It goes on for three more stanzas.
• linkARIAFLAME - It's really good.
• linkBen Ainslie - This toy makes some good products.It's frighteningly good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, it tried to rhyme 'innate' with 'replete'.
• linkBen Ainslie - I know.
• linkLord Mortis - I'm not sure you can call an application supported by some of the best AI researchers doing this work and also the systems that it runs on a toy.This thing is big.
• linkLord Mortis - laughter
• linkBen Ainslie - It's a very large, expensive toy.I'm sorry, you're right.
• linkARIAFLAME - If it is something that is people play with, a toy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkLord Mortis - True, it's a toy in that way, but there's the…crosstalk
• linkAdam - In January or February, they're going to be releasing ChatGPT 4, which apparently has 50 times larger or something.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God.
• linkAdam - Just training this, just the hardware and software cost, creating this model, just the training, that costs $6 million.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.We used it for Friday night.
• linkAdam - Process of doing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not the hardware.
• linkBen Ainslie - What did you use it for Friday night?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We were playing D&D, and one of our people couldn't join, so we just ChatGPTed his character.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - That is genius.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It was Steve's idea.Steve is a genius.That's why I'm married him.So, we were like, "Okay, there's this character.He has these and these weapons." ChatGPT was really into the javelin, which is funny because our friend never uses the javelin.It was like, "I take the javelin and I stab."
• linkBen Ainslie - What I love is that…crosstalk
• linkLord Mortis - What's interesting is when it will become a more meaningful toy, I think, is when you can run it on your own thing and you can train it, you could record that person's sessions and then actually train a model on them and then have them…
• linkBen Ainslie - Which is exactly what we were talking to Daan about lastunintelligible 01:38:31.His thing was, "I want to be able to give this tool to individuals for the work that they want to do." Of course, he was talking about people doing really special, significant, important things like saving languages, but we want to play silly pretend role games.
• linkLord Mortis - I guess this is coming from my inside baseball and a game developer, and games in general has not spent as much time on AI for stories and emotions as they have for a thing you shoot, which is the problem.There's been a large movement of, "Can we do narrative for a player, a single player?" So, all this stuff seems really exciting to us, but it's horrible because we're like, "No one can afford to run an Amazon cluster to service one player." The economics don't work.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, for sure.
• linkLord Mortis - I want it to be more of a toy.laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Yet.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I can sense that we're all very interested in this, and that Daniel has a very good idea with shits that we're running towards the end.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We got to wrap it up.But I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who voted, all of you who brought us words, to Dustin of Sandman's Stories, who recommends us to everybody, everybody, everybody.Thanks to the team at SpeechDocs, who's listening to us right now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'd like to also thank everybody who appeared on the show for this entire year, and they are Rebecca Shapiro, Ricker Dockum, Jessi Grieser, Mignon Fogarty aka Grammar Girl.Anna Marie Trester, Ellen, Kitty Liu and Romany Amber, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater, Tiger Webb, Jonathon Green, Mr.Slang.Ellen Jovin of the Grammar Table.Thom Scott-Phillips, Joshua Blackburn, Hayley Gold, Hannah Little, Isabelle Burke, Yeah-Nah, that was her thing.Not that I'm saying that to her.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.We're not saying Yeah-Nah to her.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Kelly Wright, Chase Dalton, Daan van Esch, and all the great patrons and listeners that you heard tonight and throughout the year.Most of all, thanks to you, our dear patrons who keep us going and give us so much support.Ben, take us to theunintelligible 01:40:35.
• linkBen Ainslie - clears throatIf you like the show, here's what you can do.You can send us ideas and feedback.How do you do that, you ask?Great question, random, disembodied voice in my head.You can follow us because we are @becauselangpod everywhere except for Spotify.You can leave us a message with SpeakPipe, which is the thing we say every week and not many people are doing it, but we really want you to.You go to SpeakPipe and you record a little thing for us and then we can play it on the show and that'd be really cool.Or if you're particularly old fashioned or you've just got heaps you want to say, like a creed or a manifesto, you can write us a good old-fashioned email, hello@becauselanguage.com.Of course, you can do the most lo-fi but highbrow of all things and recommend us to a friend.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, friends are great, and we have a lot of friends.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Friends suck.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Friends are great.And we have a lot of friends.Friends is another word that I use for our supporters on Patreon, a lot of them who are here in the chat with us right now.If you become a supporter of us on Patreon, you get bonus episodes, which is fun.You get to hang out with us on Discord, which is fun, and then you get to see silly things like what Adam created pictures of us, which…
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, so good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's very good.I had actually missed in the flow of all the other messages, so I'm very glad that I got to see those today.You also make it possible for us to give a little some money for our guests and pay so that we can get transcripts so that these episodes are searchable and findable and available to people who might want to read through it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And now, I'm going to attempt.It used to be that the list of supporters on Patreon was such that I could do it in one breath.It is no longer the case, and I am not trying it anymore because it's just useless.Oh, and I see that it says check before airtime, does that mean that I can use the version I have, Daniel?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, you can.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, good.Shoutout to our top patrons.They are Iztin, Termy, Elías, Matt, Whitney, Helen, Jack, PharaohKatt, Lord Mortis, gramaryen, Larry, Kristofer, Andy B, James S, Nigel, Meredith, Kate, Nasrin, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Margareth, Manú, Rodger, Rhian, Colleen, Ignacio, Sonic Snejhog, Kevin, Jeff, Andy from Logophilius, Stan, Kathy, Rach, Cheyenne, Felicity S, Amir, Canny Archer, O Tim, Alyssa, Chris W, Felicity G.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You can also donate to us on Ko-fi, which is…I think it's Ko-fee or Ko-fi, I'm not entirely sure, but it's a place a lot of people use, if you want to send a quick short-time donation, that's another place you can do.We should also shout out our newest patrons at the listener level.They are Alessandra and BurekAuFromage.Burek is a Slavic Bulgarian thing, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not sure.
• linkBen Ainslie - Not sure?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Didn't get time to look that up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And fromage is cheese.I like Burek.And also, Margareth.
• linkAdam - Burek is, I think, Turkish.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Good.Thank you.Also, Margareth, who bumped up to the supporter level after years of being a patron.Thanks to all of our amazing patrons.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who's a member of Ryan Beno and of Didion's Bible.Thank you for listening.We'll catch you next time, next year.Because Language.
• linkEVERYONE - Pew, pew, pew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Everybody wave.Hi.
• linkEVERYONE - Hi.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was a lot of fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - Thanks so much.Thanks for being patient with me rocking up late, everybody.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We love you, Ben.
• linkTranscript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription