2023-11-30 17:00:00
In an era where conversations with our loved ones take place on WhatsApp, work is largely done from the computer, and entertainment is on digital platforms, “authentic” is the word of the year chosen by Merriam-Webster, one of the most recognized dictionaries worldwide.
The dictionary offers two main definitions for this word. The first, “something real, current, not false or imitated.” The second, “faithful to one’s own personality, spirit or character.” According to a press release from the company, this selection is born from an analysis where the most searched words are studied within the 500 thousand search entries that the dictionary had in 2023.
According to note of Quartz, to make this selection the Merriam-Webster team investigated data on search spikes and the world events that correlate them. This time, there was not a particularly large increase at one point, but rather a steady increase in interest in “authentic.”
“We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” said Peter Sokolowski, managing editor of Merriam-Webster, in an interview with The Associated Press . “What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more,” she elaborated.
The authentic in times of AI
That the authentic attracts interest is no coincidence in a year in which artificial intelligence has taken center stage. Faced with the circulation of artificial images, fake videos or even the creation of new songs using the voices of artists without their permission, where was the art of taking a good photo instead of asking MidJourney to take it? From a good song? From an article written by a person?
These are the same questions Sokolowski asked himself. «Can we trust whether a student wrote this work? Can we trust the statements of a politician? “We no longer always trust what we see,” he questioned. Sometimes we don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. “Now we recognize that authenticity is a performance in itself,” he reflected.
Other words that, according to The Associated Press, brought unusual traffic are:
X: Searches spiked in July following Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand.
EGOT: In February, Viola Davis achieved a quadruple win with a Grammy.
Elemental: the title of a new Pixar movie that skyrocketed searches in June.
In 2022, the word selected by Merriam-Webster was gaslighting, defined as a type of psychological abuse in which someone is made to question their own reality.
This content was originally published in RED/ACCION and is republished as part of the ‘Human Journalism’ program, an alliance for quality journalism between RÍO NEGRO and RED/ACCION
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