20181229.0430

On 21 December 2018, John Eubanks's "That Time of the Year for 'Word of the Year'" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article relates its author's musings on competing word of the year contenders from various dictionaries of more and less repute. Dictionary.com, the OED, Collins, and Merriam-Webster are reported upon, with Eubanks's own contention following. An exhortation to align to prescriptive grammar standards ends the piece, deviating from the thrust of the rest of the piece and annoying in its reiteration of resistance to changes in language that are as being bad. (It should be no secret at this point that I chafe at seeing such things.)
Eubanks is correct that it is the time of year for such reflection. The ends of things prompt backward looks, and I am not immune to the impulse to do so. Indeed, in my private journals, I do so, though rarely in the kind of formal fashion to which I am trained. ("Rarely," though, means it has happened, and there are scrawled citations even in my personal journals, referring a putative reader back to earlier volumes in them. Because I am a nerd, and of one of the higher orders of nerdiness.) But whether I will be doing so in this webspace is still an open question. I do not know that it would be welcome here, or that I have enough on which to look back with analysis that would matter in any way. Not that a non-monetized blog with a dedicated but small readership matters in any major way.
Then again, given what else is in Eubanks's article, not mattering doesn't much matter. (I'm not necessarily pleased with the piece, if it's not obvious.) Eubanks's own contribution to the discussion reads to me as pallid, a brief note that ought to have received more attention than it does; the OED speaks for itself, but Eubanks's comments could only be had from him. And I am somewhat struck by the choices of dictionaries used and the relative eminence accorded to each; the OED is a better piece of work than Merriam-Webster or Collins, and Dictionary.com is a feeble competitor against them, despite it being given pride of place. (It is not an issue of online access so much as thinness and lack of interest in its materials; I'd love to have seen Urban Dictionary represented.)
What do I know, though? I've not done what I've needed to do to be able to weigh in on a word of the year, though I imagine I could go back over the work I've done in this webspace and look for the significant word I've used most in it. (I make the comment knowing that "a" or "the" will be the overall winner.) I've not done it yet, though I think that stupid might be a contender, given some of my other work. Others, less fortunate, likely are, as well. But I'll not plumb that particular depth; I worry about what I would dredge up. Others can sift through that silt, if they wish, and find what there is of value in it.