Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Dictionaries have selected enshittification, brain-rot and polarization as their 2024 Words of the Year. Each are depressingly apt reflections of the past 12 months. Roméo Dallaire’s latest book The Peace includes the words Ubumwe(Kinyarwanda), Ubuntu (Zulu) and Niw_hk_m_kanak (Cree) – which all convey more uplifting ways of being that were much needed in 2024.
The publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary selected brain-rot as their Word of the Year.