[ADS-M] 2022 Word of the Year is "-ussy"

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at gmail.com
Sat Jan 7 12:29:35 UTC 2023


https://www.americandialect.org/2022-word-of-the-year-is-ussy

The American Dialect Society, in its 33rd annual words-of-the-year vote,
selected the suffix “-ussy” as the Word of the Year for 2022. More than two
hundred attendees took part in the deliberations and voting, joining both
in person and virtually, in a hybrid event hosted in conjunction with the
Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver, CO.

Presiding at the Jan. 6 voting session was Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New
Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

“The selection of the suffix '-ussy' highlights how creativity in new word
formation has been embraced online in venues like TikTok,” Zimmer said.
“The playful suffix builds off the word 'pussy' to generate new slang
terms. The process has been so productive lately on social media sites and
elsewhere that it has been dubbed '-ussification.'”

The full press release, including all winners, candidates, and vote tallies
for all candidates, is here:
https://www.americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2022-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

And for more on "-ussification" see:
https://www.vulture.com/2022/01/bussy-trend-linguists-explain.html
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ussy
https://cla-acl.ca/pdfs/actes-2018/Dow-2018.pdf
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