Omicron is Shanghai Daily's Word of the Year 2022

As we head toward year 2023, it's time to sum up year 2022.

Looking back at the passing year in terms of words has become a common practice lately. It has emerged as an important cultural activity in many places around the world.

The selection of Word of the Year is generally believed to have been initiated by the American Dialect Society in early 1991 when the century-old society named the Word of the Year 1990. The idea gradually spread, and the ritual was echoed. The institutions in the English-speaking world followed suit; other languages were inspired and did likewise.

Collins English Dictionary shortlisted 10 candidates, with permacrisis (a blend of "permanent" and "crisis") at the top. This neologism refers to the extended instability and insecurity caused by a series of catastrophic events.

Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year is homer (short for "home run"), a baseball term made popular by Wordle, a popular online crossword puzzle that has attracted hordes of enthusiasts. The word "homer" is unique to American sports culture, causing many Wordle players unfamiliar with it to stumble.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary shortlisted nine candidates, of which gaslighting (a form of psychological manipulation and mental abuse) won the title. The word comes from the 1938 play "Gas Light," which is more widely known for its 1944 film adaptation. Angela Lansbury, the Oscar-winning supporting actress in the film adaptation, died at the age of 96 in 2022, prompting a surge in word search on the Merriam-Webster's website.

Oxford Languages opened the choice of Word of the Year up to English speakers for the first time in its history. The editorial staff picked the top three from Oxford Corpus: metaverse, #IStandWith and goblin mode, from which English speakers cast their votes. Finally, goblin mode won hands down.

According to the editorial staff, the slang term is often used in the expressions "in goblin mode" or "to go goblin mode," aptly describing the zeitgeist and ethos in the West when people seem unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations. This is especially true after the pandemic lockdown was eased in 2022.

The choice of Shanghai Daily

The Corpus Research Group at Shanghai's Sanda University was launched in 2021, with Hugo Tseng, Men Haiyan and Yang Zhixia at the core. At the end of that year, the research group named "vaccine" as Shanghai Daily's Word of the Year, arguably the first of its kind in China.

In the early winter of 2022, Sanda's research group resumed the annual project, with Shanghai Daily as the corpus for research. Shanghai Daily is the first local English daily newspaper in China, the only English daily publication in Shanghai, and the most influential foreign-language media in the Yangtze River Delta region.

The selection criteria are the same as those of the previous year. The Word of the Year does not need to be a single word; it can be a phrase or a short sentence. The key point is that this word should be representative enough to encapsulate the major events, social pulses and the ethos and zeitgeist of the year in question. The depth, breadth, intensity and endurance of its influence should be taken into account.

The corpus was collected in the past 12 months, from December 2021 to November 2022. With the help of computer-aided statistical analysis plus manual intervention, the words used by Shanghai Daily in 2022 were revealed. All the candidates went through several rounds of rigorous preselections, evaluations and reappraisal to make it to the shortlist.

Unanimously, we settled on Omicron as Shanghai Daily's Word of the Year 2022.

In 2022, COVID-19 is still here with us, and we continue to be affected by this pandemic to varying degrees. The main virus is the Omicron variant.

At the end of 2021, the research group noticed the appearance of Omicron when selecting Shanghai Daily's Word of the Year. At that time, Omicron was just emerging, but we dedicated a paragraph to our observation of this new threat:

"Omicron, the latest COVID-19 virus variant, deserves a special mention. Omicron entered our virus-fighting battlefield when the word selection process was under way. However, its rather relatively late debut means it will probably be shortlisted next year."

This year, Omicron's impact has been beyond imagination. In March, Shanghai was in the grip of the Omicron variant for more than two months. This variant appeared and caused trouble all over the country, through the whole of 2022, uppending people's lives. After careful consideration, the choice of Omicron as Shanghai Daily's Word of the Year seemed more than natural.

In addition to Omicron, other candidates on the shortlist include the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Beijing Winter Olympics and 20th CPC National Congress, all major events exerting far-reaching influence at home and abroad this year.

(The article is written by Hugo Tseng, professor of English & College Dean, Sanda University; Men Haiyan, lecturer of English, Sanda University; and Yang Zhixia, lecturer of English, Sanda University.)