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“Truth” is Top Word of the Year 2017 by The Global Language Monitor

 

The Only Analysis for Global English Worldwide

18th annual analysis by the Global Language Monitor

“Weinstein Effect” (and #MeToo) is the Top Phrase and Xi Jinping is the Top Name of 2017

 Recently, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) announced that Truth is the Word of the Year for 2017.

 

For Immediate Release,

For More Information, call 001.512.801.6823 or email info@LanguageMonitor.com.

December 7, 2017,  Austin, Texas (Updated) – Truth has been named the 2017 Word of the Year for Global English (#WOTY2017) by the Global Language Monitor, in its eighteenth annual global analysis. In addition, the Weinstein Effect has been named the Top Phrase and Chinese leader Xi Jingping the Top Name of 2017.  Following ‘Truth’ were the words Narrative, Opioids, Awoke, and Nuclear Option.  Rounding out the Top Ten were Deep State, Robot Apocalypse, Higher Level of Fake News, Blessee, and Lean Into. 

“Since the turn of the century, the Global Language Monitor has been naming the words of global English that have had the most profound influence upon the language, the culture, and/or the world of the 21st century,” said Paul JJ Payack, President, and Chief Word Analyst.  GLM ‘s methodology, true to its Silicon Valley heritage, is to examine the totality of Global English with the tools now available to better understand the underlying trends that shape our words and, hence, our world.”

GLM tracks the top trending words three times during the year before the final assessment is released at year end.  Below are the Global Language Monitor’s 2017 Words of the Year for Global English.

Global Language Monitor’s 2017 Top Words of the Year for Global English

Rank, Word, Previous Rank, Definition 

  1. Truth (1) — Let’s face it.  The conversation is all about truth, or lack thereof.
  2. Narrative (2) — As GLM noted in ’08, Narratives began replacing facts in politics; a harbinger to ’fake news’.
  3. Opioids (10) — More deaths than gun violence and automobiles crashed combined.
  4. Post-Truth (16) — Objective facts are less influential than appeals to emotion or the prevailing narrative.
  5. Woke (New) — Awakening to issues of social and racial justice.
  6. Brexit (4) — [United Kingdom] Definition according to Theresa May:  “Brexit means Brexit”.
  7. Blessee (New) — [RSA, South Africa] Those who are shown financial favor through a ‘Sugar Daddy’ (New)
  8. Non-binary (13) — Gender identity defined as neither male nor female.
  9. Anthropocene (15) — The current geological time period where human activities have had a major environmental impact on the Earth.
  10. Latinx (11) — Neologism for the Hispanic heritage of any stripe.
  11. Ransomware (New) — A type of malware where targeted sites are ‘captured’ and rendered useless until a ransom is paid to the hackers.
  12. Tradie (New) — [Australia] Short for any worker in the trades:  tradesmen, e.g., electricians (sparkies), truckers (truckies), chippies (carpenter) and the like.
  13. Flip (New) — Any quick financial transact5on meant to turn a quick profit, particularly involving real estate.
  14. Covfefe — The Trumpian Typo Heard ‘Round the world.
  15. #Resist — From Latin resistere, from re- + sistere to take a stand
  16. Appropriation (Cultural) — Now refers to the exploitation of an ‘ethnic’ culture by those of white European heritage.

Missed the Cut and former rank: Antifa (18), Alt-right (17), Bigly (5), and Populism (19)

Global Language Monitor’s 2017 Top Phrases of the Year for Global English

Rank, Word, Previous Rank, Definition Weinstein Effect (New) — (#MeToo) Emboldened women across the globe confront those who have been abused them in their past.

  1. Weinstein Effect (and #MeToo) (New) — Emboldened women across the globe confront those who have been abused them in their past.
  2. Nuclear Option (7) — The use of nuclear weapons by either side in the on-going and decades-long North Korean standoff.
  3. Deep State (New) — The idea that entrenched bureaucracies, beholden to no one, controlling the ship of state with little concern for elected officials.  In effect, a ‘Shadow’ government
  4. For Real (FR) (New) — [Indian] It took a half a century for the hip lingo of Venice Beach to proliferate to the call centers of India as FR.
  5. Robot Apocalypse (New) — The oncoming usurpation of Humankind by robots and other advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence.
  6. Fake News (New) — A higher level (and far more dangerous method controlling the news) through special relationships, the tight control of events, planting sources, and keeping the actual facts to a tight inner circle.
  7. Lean Into (New) — Being totally committed (or lean into) a cause, an initiative, or career choice.
  8. Non-binary (13) — Gender identity defined as neither male nor female.
  9. Memory Care (14) — Euphemism for treating Alzheimer and other forms of dementia
  10. Cultural Appropriation — Now refers to the exploitation of an ‘ethnic’ culture by those of white European heritage.

Missed the Cut and former rank: Alt-right (17), Dumpster Fire (9), Nuclear Option for US Senate (6), and Safe Place (20).

Global Language Monitor’s 2017 Top Names of the Year

Rank, Name

  1. Xi Jinping — General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
  2. Donald J. Trump — President of the United States of America; Trump took the Top Honors in 2016 and 2015.
  3. Pope Francis —  Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, the Bishop of Rome, and sovereign of Vatican City.
  4. Angela Merkel —  Angela Dorothea Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
  5. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin —  President of Russia
  6. Theresa May — P)rime Minister of the United Kingdom
  7. Kim Jung Un —   North Korean Strongman
  8. Narendra Modi — Prime Minister of India
  9. Donald Tusk — President of the European Commission
  10. Shinzō Abe — Prime Minister of Japan
  11. Justin Trudeau — Prime Minister of Canada
  12. Hurricane Harvey and Maria — Hurricanes that devastated Houston and Puerto Rico, respectively

Methodology:  The words are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 2.35 billion speakers (January 2018 estimate) GLM employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 375,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge.

 

About the Global Language Monitor

In 2003, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known.

Today, from its home in Austin, Texas GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities. Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands, and to defend products against ambush marketing.

These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, the Higher Education market, high technology firms, the worldwide print, and electronic media, as well as the global fashion industry, among others.

For more information, call 1.512.801-6823, email info@LanguageMonitor.com, or visit www.LanguageMonitor.com.

 


About

glm-logo

 

In 2003, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known.
Today, from its home in Austin, Texas GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities.  Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands.

These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, Olympic Partners, leading Higher Education institutions, high-tech firms, the worldwide print and electronic media, the global fashion industry, among others.

Paul JJ Payack lecturing on Big and Ephemeral Data in Shanghai

Payack was cited as the first Shanghai International Creative City Think Tank Master.

GLM foresees a time in the near future where data doubles every hour, every minute, then every second.

To address this unfolding reality, GLM created the tools you need to address an enterprise in a world never at rest, where the facts can change before you locked your strategy into place, in the world where the social media of today is but a hint of what will emerge in the coming months and years.

GLM’s specialized products and services have been built from the ground up for Big and bigger date,  for a marketplace ever in flux, where the only constant changes.

Belfer Center Logo

Ephemera

In 2003, GLM’s founder, Paul JJ Payack, first conceived of a new class of data that he called Ephemera, or Ephemeral Data.

 Global Language Monitor’s proprietary algorithms (including the PQI and Narrative Tracker) are used to plum ephemeral data on any topic for any industry worldwide, quickly and accurately.  Many organizations have used GLM as an additional input to their already robust analytical solutions.  Call 1.512.801.6823 or email info@LanguageMonitor.com

Subprime Meltdown (New York Times)

In 2006, The New York Times worked with the Global Language Monitor to assess the state of the New York City real estate market.  GLM’s used its proprietary POI technology, which The Times described as “an algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet in relation to frequency, context, and appearance in the global media.”  The study has been hailed as presaging the coming Financial Meltdown, now known as the Great Recession.

The New York Times featuring GLM’s PQI
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GLM’s Founder on BBC America

GLM as a Source of Record

GLM continues to be cited hundreds of by the leading print and electronic media the world over. In fact, the worldwide print and electronic media have come to rely on The Global Language Monitor for its expert analysis on cultural trends and their subsequent impact on various aspects of culture.

Worldwide print and electronic media have come to rely on GLM for it Trend Tracking and analytics-based analyses.

BBC Cites GLM for Words of the Decade

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the BBC used two global experts to choose the words that would sum up the decades,  represented English as spoken in the UK, the other English as spoken in America, Australia and the rest of the world.

 

The Global Language Monitor’s president was chosen for Global English as shown below.

A representative sampling includes:  CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International, Knight-Ridder, USAToday, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Charlotte Observer, Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Jose Mercury, New York Post, NPR, FoxNews, ABC, NBC, CBS, ChinaNews, Peoples Daily, The National Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, The Canadian Broadcasting Company, The Cape Town Argus, El Pais (Madrid), The Daily Mail (Scotland), The Hindustan Times, The Gulf News (Qatar), and various electronic and print media on six continents.

About Paul JJ Payack

Paul JJ Payack has served as a senior executive of three Fortune 500 high technology companies (Unisys, Dun & Bradstreet, and StorageTek), and three Silicon Valley technology companies (Apollo Computer, Intelliguard Software, Legato Systems) that were acquired by four other Silicon Valley giants (EMC, Dell, Oracle, and HP), as well as numerous start-ups and re-starts.  (For Payack’s Linkedin bio, go here.)

Currently, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst, he also was the founding president of yourDictionary.com. These two language sites attract millions of page views a month. He founded GLM in Silicon Valley in 2003 and moved it to Austin, Texas in 2008.

Payack taught scientific and technological communications at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Texas-Arlington and Babson College, the Federal Reserve Bank (NY), GM/Hughes Aircraft, and many others.

He is a frequent guest on the media circuit including CNN, the BBC, NPR, the CBS, Australia Broadcasting Company and Chinese Radio and Television.

Payack is the author of some eighteen collections (seven currently in print), including  A Million Words and Counting, Kensington (New York) as well as co-author with Edward ML Peters of  The Paid-for Option (Tower Oaks Press), an analysis of the healthcare crisis in the USA.  (For a sampling of Payack’s creative work, including metafiction, flash fiction, and collage art, go here.)

Payack studied philosophy and psychology at Bucknell University and was graduated from Harvard University where he studied comparative literature and classical languages, also publishing his first collection of metafiction, A Ripple in Entropy.  Later he earned a CAGS with a focus on fine arts;  his thesis being a Play in Seven Episodes.  Worlds to Shatter, Shattered Worlds.

He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Millie, and family. Contact Payack directly:  001 512 801 6823 or pauljjpayack@gmail.com or @languagemonitor.



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