Committee’s Choice winner
The Committee’s Choice for the 2017 Word of the Year is milkshake duck. This is an absolute winner! Even if you don’t know the word, you know the phenomenon. Milkshake duck stood out as being a much needed term to describe something we are seeing more and more of, not just on the internet but now across all types of media. It plays to the simultaneous desire to bring someone down and the hope that they won’t be brought down. In many ways it captures what 2017 has been about. There is a hint of tall poppy syndrome in there, which we always thought was a uniquely Australian trait, but has been amplified through the internet and become universalised. –THE COMMITTEE
Committee’s Choice Honourable Mentions
Endling is a much needed word that has a real resonance to it. We are now facing very real concerns about what extinction means when we go past that point of no return. And the association this word has with the word ‘foundling’ lends a real sense of vulnerability to the meaning. –THE COMMITTEE
Framily is an interesting new sociological word, especially as our vocabulary has not always kept up with the changes we are now seeing to the conventional ideas of what constitutes a family. There is an element of kitschness to the coinage but we love it to pieces. –THE COMMITTEE
The Committee for the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2017
People’s Choice
Voting is now closed for the People’s Choice. The winner will be announced at 7:00am AEDST 23/01/2018.
Shortlist
The Committee’s top 15 are as below.
Download the Committee’s Choice Top 15 as a PDF.
You can also access a longer list of 75 words that the Committee whittled down here.
