- U.S. linguists on Friday chose"they" as their Word of the Decade, recognizing the growing use of third-person plural pronouns as a singular form to refer to people who identify their gender as neither entirely male nor entirely female.
The two awards were decided by some 350 member of the society at its annual meeting of academics, graduate students and word lovers who voted by a show of hands, said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and lexicographer who chairs the group's New Words Committee. The same trend was behind the selection of"they" as the Word of the Decade, recognizing its growing use to refer to a person whose gender identity is non-binary. The singular use of"they" was previously designated as the 2015 Word of the Year.
Social media has turbo-charged the way words or phrases become popular, leading to some recent multi-word champions for Word of the Year, including"tender-age shelter" in 2018 and"fake news" in 2017.-"#BlackLivesMatter," the hashtag used to protest alleged disparities in police use of force against African Americans.