Durban – Oxford University has announced “goblin mode” as the Word of the Year after more than 340 000 people cast their vote worldwide.
Previous words have included Vax (2021), Climate Emergency (2019), and Selfie (2013).
This comes after the Word of the Year vote was opened to English speakers for the first time in its history.
“Oxford University Press is pleased to announce ‘goblin mode’ as the Oxford Word of the Year for 2022,” said the university in a statement on Monday.
The university said: “The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression reflecting the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past 12 months, one that has potential as a term of lasting cultural significance.”
According to the university, the Word of the Year is supported by evidence of real language usage. Oxford’s editors track candidates as they emerge throughout the year, analysing frequency statistics and other language data in the Oxford English Corpus.
“This year, the Oxford Languages lexicographers narrowed down a long list of worthy contestants to a final three – metaverse, #IStandWith, and goblin mode – and between 21 November and 2 December the public was invited to vote for their favourite. The response was overwhelming, with a total of 342 079 people casting their vote and countless more debating the merit of the finalists through Oxford’s social media outlets.”
More about the winning word goblin mode:
- With a landslide number of votes, goblin mode has been chosen as the Word of the Year, with a total of 318 956 votes, making up 93% of the overall vote.
- Goblin mode – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’
- Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February 2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline.
- The term then rose in popularity over the months as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly.
- Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media.
The Oxford Corpus lists many vivid examples of goblin mode:
‘Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long T-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines’, as quoted in The Guardian newspaper.
More recently, an opinion piece in The Times stated that “too many of us… have gone ‘goblin mode’ in response to a difficult year“.
“Goblin mode really does speak to the times and the zeitgeist, and it is certainly a 2022 expression. People are looking at social norms in new ways. It gives people the licence to ditch social norms and embrace new ones,” said American linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer who was speaking at a special event to announce this year’s approach to selecting the Oxford Word of the Year.