If current events have left you wondering how this is real life, or whether you’ve been sent to an alternative dimension where up is down and opinions are facts, you’re not alone: Merriam-Webster has deemed 2016’s word of the year “surreal.”
Merriam-Webster editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski told NPR that the word “surreal” sees the most hits after a national or global tragedy:
“It’s a term that we have associated with tragedy for a number of years. It was one of the most looked-up words after 9/11, and then after that we noticed after the Newtown shootings, and after the Boston Marathon bombing, and Robin Williams’ suicide, for example. That was the word that people turned to.”
For a while, it was looking like “fascism” would be our word of the year. But Sokolowski says that word pops up enough times throughout the years that its prevalence in lookups this year wasn’t exceptional. For surreal, however, there were just enough “holy shit” moments in 2016 that it saw many spikes. There were eight or 10 spikes for different reasons throughout the year, around newsworthy times: The presidential election, the Brussels attack and the Bastille Day massacre in Nice, France, to name a few.
The word is defined as “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream; unbelievable, fantastic.” It’s safe to say we’re not talking about the beautiful kind of dream, but one that’s so surreal it’s hard to believe we’re not asleep.
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