Ditch deep fakes, AI and post-truth, as the 20th annual Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is has focused instead on being true to yourself.
Editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski said: 'We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity. What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.'
Sokolowski and his team don't delve into the reasons people head for dictionaries and websites in search of specific words. Rather, they chase the data on lookup spikes and world events that correlate. This time around, there was no particularly huge boost at any given time but a constancy to the increased interest in 'authentic.'
This was the year of artificial intelligence, for sure, but also a moment when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI suffered a leadership crisis. Taylor Swift and Prince Harry chased after authenticity in their words and deeds.
Musk himself, at February's World Government Summit in Dubai, urged the heads of companies, politicians, ministers and other leaders to 'speak authentically' on social media by running their own accounts.
'Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don't always trust what we see anymore,' Sokolowski said. 'We sometimes don't believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.'
'Authentic' follows 2022´s choice of 'gaslighting.' And 2023 marks Merriam-Webster's 20th anniversary choosing a top word
Merriam-Webster's entry for 'authentic' is busy with meaning.
There is 'not false or imitation: real, actual,' as in an authentic cockney accent. There's 'true to one's own personality, spirit or character.' There's 'worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.' There is 'made or done the same way as an original.' And, perhaps the most telling, there's 'conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.'
'Authentic' follows 2022´s choice of 'gaslighting.' And 2023 marks Merriam-Webster's 20th anniversary choosing a top word.
This image released by Merriam-Webster shows an online dictionary entry for authentic.
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