Why 'surreal' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year

After the 2016 presidential election, there was a surge of people looking online to determine the meaning of 'surreal.'

|
Bebeto Matthews/AP
"Surreal" is Merriam-Webster's word of 2016 based on spikes in lookups.

Merriam-Webster has chosen a word to sum up odd chain of events that made this year one to remember: “surreal.”  

From the unexpected victory of President-elect Donald Trump to traumatic terrorist attacks in Nice, France, and Orlando to the sudden deaths of beloved celebrities like Prince and David Bowie, 2016 has delivered a series of both bizarre and heartbreaking events that in some instances can only be described as surreal, meaning “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream," or "unbelievable, fantastic," according to Merriam-Webster’s definition.

And that has led people to increasingly turn to the word. Merriam-Webster tracks the entries people search from year to year, noticing spikes and looking to concurring news events in an effort to explain the trends. In 2016, the word “surreal” spiked several times, usually following a tragedy or event that proves difficult to articulate or believe.

"It just seems like one of those years," Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor at large, told the Associated Press. "We noticed the same thing after the Newtown shootings, after the Boston Marathon bombings, after Robin Williams' suicide. Surreal has become this sort of word that people seek in moments of great shock and tragedy."

The highest spike came on Nov. 9 and 10, the two days following the presidential election, Mr. Sokolowski told The Wall Street Journal.

The dictionary tracks trends in two ways: the first being words that are searched frequently and daily, and the second by following searches that spike as a reflection of news and pop culture. The latter gives Merriam-Webster a glimpse into what people are thinking about said events, the company said in a statement.

"Surreal" isn’t alone as an off-kilter choice when summing up the year in just a few syllables. Oxford selected “post-truth,” and Dictionary.com revealed that "xenophobia" was one of the most widely searched terms, showing the influence Mr. Trump’s unconventional campaign has had on Americans.  

The world "surreal" is less than 100 years old itself, defined sometime after a group of European artists founded the Surrealism movement, seeking to break down rational thought through unconventional expression. By 1937, the word had come to stand on its own.

In 2015, the dictionary company selected “ism” as the word of the year, noting the importance of concepts like socialism, feminism, and fascism as they became more commonly used in the early months of the election.

Among the top contenders for Merriam-Webster’s word of 2016 were “deplorable,” “bigly,” and “icon.”

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why 'surreal' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/1220/Why-surreal-is-Merriam-Webster-s-word-of-the-year
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe