Poll of the Day > 2022 Word of the Year is "-ussy"

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https://www.americandialect.org/2022-word-of-the-year-is-ussy

yatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention CenterJan. 6The American Dialect Society, in its 33rd annual words-of-the-year vote, selected the suffix -ussy as the Word of the Year for 2022. More than two hundred attendees took part in the deliberations and voting, joining both in person and virtually, in a hybrid event hosted in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of Americas annual meeting. Presiding at the Jan. 6 voting session was Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
The selection of the suffix -ussy highlights how creativity in new word formation has been embraced online in venues like TikTok, Zimmer said. The playful suffix builds off the word pussy to generate new slang terms. The process has been so productive lately on social media sites and elsewhere that it has been dubbed
-ussification.
For more on the -ussy phenomenon, see the Vulture article by Bethy Squires, We Asked Linguists Why People Are Adding -Ussy to Every Word: Riffing off bussy (a portmanteau of boy and pussy), now everything is a cat or a cavity. A calzone is a pizzussy. A wine bottle has a winussy. See also Michael Dows scholarly paper, A corpus study of phonological factors in novel English blends.
Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as vocabulary itemnot just words but also phrases, compounds, and affixes. The items do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year. This is not the first time an affix has been named Word of the Year: in 1998, the prefix e- (as in email) was selected.
The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion.
Members in the 133-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, students, and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead, they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.

That site is sussy

I just thought it was funny

That actually is hilarious. But I had to look up American Dialect Society. It's actually legit lmao.

Dictionary.com was boring they chose woman. Merriam chose gaslighting. Oxford chose... goblin mode? I've never heard that phrase I don't think.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Dictionary.com was boring they chose woman. Merriam chose gaslighting. Oxford chose... goblin mode? I've never heard that phrase I don't think.

Gaslighting is the only one out of any of those (including -ussy) that even remotely seem fitting for 2022.

Catch me on OF #BussyBoy94

Gary Busussy

I don't know a single person who says -ussy. Not one.

baltoboulbobbi posted...

I don't know a single person who says -ussy. Not one.

Twitch streamers.

But they commit crimes against the English language every day.

Catussy

I have only heard of two words that end with -ussy, Neither is appropriate for this site.
This is very generation alpha.

That's not a word. It's a suffix.

Catch your favorite #BussyBoy on OF, I'm giving a 50% discount on old vids #BussyBoy94 check it out

Uzzy I get due to wrestling. Never heard of ussy until now though.

The English language was a mistake.

There are days where I wish I hadn't heard that before.

Claude Debussy

darkknight109 posted...

The English language was a mistake.

Sounds like somebody is very much not feeling the Englussy today.

https://youtu.be/5Qx2EvXjYnM