At least it wasn’t covfefe.
At least it wasn’t covfefe.
Collins Dictionary has kicked off the 2017 look-backs by coining its word of the year before the Oxford English Dictionary and it’s very Trumpian.
The phrase “ fake news,” which can be heard every day, whether on the President’s Twitter account or from your neighbor denying he ran over your shrubs, has been named Collins’ Word of the Year, beating out any dictionaries who may have wanted to claim the phrase.
The U. K. Dictionary traced the origins of the phrase to comedy news programs like “The Daily Show” before Donald Trump picked it up in January of 2017 to slam CNN. They officially defined it as a noun meaning “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news.”
Trump calls sexual assault claims against him ‘fake news‘
Runners-up for Collins’ Word of the Year include “cuffing season,” looking a winter girlfriend or boyfriend for cold winter nights, before dumping them in the spring; “gig economy,” the nature of the current prevalence of freelance jobs over permanent ones; and “unicorn,” as in the Unicorn Frappuccino and all the other pastel rainbow and sparkly infused edible and non-edible items that ruled 2017.
Collins’ choice of Word of the Year is likely to be the first of a President Trump-themed list of Words chosen by major dictionaries. Similarly, last year’s batch of words centered around the 2016 election. Oxford chose “ post-truth,” Dictionary.com picked “ xenophobia,” and Merriam-Webster threw “ surreal ” into the ring.
Collins isn’t the first dictionary to choose “fake news” as their word of the year — Australian dictionary Macquarie chose it in 2016.
