Words of the year.. from other countries

Yep, it’s not just the Merriam-Webster people who get to decide on a word of the year – other countries have their own version.

My favourite from this round-up by Mental Floss is:

8. Ogooglebar, Swedish
Instead of picking one word of the year, the Swedes, in their egalitarian way, make a list of all the new words of the year. The Swedish Language Council announced their annual list of words that “show that language is a result of an ongoing democratic process in which we all participate.” This year there were 40 words on the list. Some of them were straight English borrowings, such as “brony,” some were references to local scandals like Tintingate, and some were pure Swedish, like henifiera (henify), referring to the practice of replacing the gendered “he” and “she” pronouns in Swedish (han and hon) with the neutral hen. Since mental_floss protocol demands a heading for this list item, however, I chose the delightful, bouncy ogooglebar. It means “ungoogleable.”

Take a look at the rest of the list here.