[ADS-M] Word of the Year 2015: singular "they"

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at gmail.com
Sat Jan 9 11:29:19 UTC 2016


Here's my writeup of the WOTY voting for Vocabulary.com:

http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/they-won-gender-neutral-pronoun-is-2015-word-of-the-year/

The selection is also receiving plenty of media coverage...

http://time.com/4173992/word-of-the-year-2015-they/
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-word-they-named-2015-word-of-the-year-2016-1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/donald-trump-may-win-this-years-word-of-the-year/
http://www.inc.com/chris-matyszczyk/the-new-word-of-the-year-is-going-to-upset-some-people.html


On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:41 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Word of the Year for 2015 is "they" used as a gender-neutral
> singular pronoun. "They" was recognized by the society for its
> emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often as a
> conscious choice by someone rejecting the traditional gender binary of
> "he" and "she."
>
> Read the press release:
> http://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-year-is-singular-they
> Shortcut to PDF: http://bit.ly/ADSWOTY15
>
> --bgz



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