131: Words of the Week of the Year 2025 (live with friends)

It’s Word of the Year season, and we’re counting down our Words of the Week of the Year! In the time-honoured tradition, we gathered them all up from our 2025 shows, and let everyone vote. And we’re going to give a mention to everyone else’s words as well. We’re joined by our friends and patrons, so come see them in chat!

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:31
• Everyone else’s words: 5:57
• Related or Not: 34:34
• Our Words of the Week of the Year: 51:35
• Comments: 1:22:04
• The Reads: 1:26:36
• Outtakes: 1:30:50

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Show notes

Dictionary.com’s 2025 Word of the Year Is…
https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2025/

‘Six-Seven’ Is Six Feet Under: Grown-ups killed it. By Ian Bogost
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/six-seven-meme-over/685231/

‘Vibe coding’ named word of the year by Collins Dictionary
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2y053nleo

Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year for 2025
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-for-2025/

Why the Economist’s word of the year ‘slop’ is the perfect choice for 2025
https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/why-the-economist-s-word-of-the-year-slop-is-the-perfect-choice-for-2025/ar-AA1RRM9K

Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year for 2025: AI slop
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-for-2025/

And the Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is… rage bait
https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/#2025-winner

‘Parasocial’ is Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2025
https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/parasocial-is-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year-2025

[PDF] 2025 Canadian Word of the Year is “Maplewash”
https://www.canadianenglishdictionary.ca/media/2025-cwoty-release.pdf

Putting the Language to Work, Work, Work: Winner Announced for Japan’s 2025 Word of the Year
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c03844/

Character for bear (熊) picked as most symbolic kanji of 2025
https://japantoday.com/category/national/character-for-bear-(熊)-picked-as-most-symbolic-kanji-of-2025

Wörter des Jahres 2025 (KI-Ära)
https://gfds.de/worter-des-jahres-2025/#

‘Das crazy’ is the German Youth Word of the Year 2025
https://www.dw.com/en/das-crazy-is-the-german-youth-word-of-the-year-2025/a-74404721

The Curious History of the Word ‘Gossip’
https://wordhistories.net/2017/02/04/gossip/

https://bsky.app/profile/gretchenmcc.bsky.social/post/3m7tfbw25322t

Prime Video launches AI-powered Video Recaps to help viewers catch up between seasons
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/ai-plot-summary-video-recaps-prime-video

Consumers don’t like AI, and it’s become a big problem for advertisers | Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-has-marketing-problem-people-dont-like-hearing-about-it-2024-8

Happy Stylish But Illegal Monkey In IKEA Day to all who celebrate!
https://bsky.app/profile/drwambsgans.bsky.social/post/3m7kzil3i6k2f

‘If Not Friend, Why Friend-Shaped?’ A Beary Scientific Investigation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-bears-friend-shaped/

“Temu is evil, but I still use it”: Platform cynicism in platform capitalism
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448251365269

Guugu Yimithirr language | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language

Guugu Yimithirr (Y82) | AIATSIS
https://aiatsis.gov.au/austlang/language/Y82

Trying to find those episodes of Language Made Difficult where Hedvig is a guest? Vitor writes:

Hi, folks!

In the last episode you asked if the Language Made Difficult episodes are still up. They are! The SpecGram website has a podcast RSS feed:

https://specgram.com/podcast.xml

It has more stuff besides LMD episodes, and is perhaps not the easiest to navigate, but Hedvig appears in episodes 41 and 42:

http://specgram.com/podcasts/LMD41.mp3
http://specgram.com/podcasts/LMD42.mp3

Honestly the easiest way to listen to the other episodes is just to change the numbers in the above URLs from 01 to 50. 😛

Thanks to Vitor for that find.

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Transcript

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]

BEN: I am… And this is yet another thing where you are just going to be like, “Why are you even alive, Ben Ainslie?” But I loathe karaoke and singing out loud, like, with a passion of thousand, thousand suns.

HEDVIG: Oh, really? Oh, wow, that’s so interesting. I didn’t know that about you. What made you be a grinch?

DANIEL: Why are you like this?

BEN: Some of us in this world sing so badly that it pushes…

HEDVIG: Oh, that is no hindrance.

BEN: No, no, no. So, you’re doing the thing where you’re just like, it’s fun to sing bad. But what I am here to say to you is that there are people in this world who can sing so badly that it pushes through that fun-to-be-bad barrier and it goes all the way around to just… I’ve seen people…

HEDVIG: That is a skill issue when it comes to engagement and passion.

DANIEL: Yeah, you’re selling it. You’re not selling it enough.

BEN: No, no, no.

DANIEL: Try leaning in.

BEN: No, I’ve seen the look. I’ve seen the look. And this is what the look is, the looks like this, I will see a person look to the other person and just kind of do this thing of like, [DANIEL LAUGHS] “Are we…? Do we?”

HEDVIG: That’s so rude. I feel bad for you guys for having such judgmental and rude friends.

BEN: [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: I’ve never found out how rude my friends are, because I’m actually quite a good singer.

BEN: [LAUGHS] Oh, my god.

[THEME MUSIC]

DANIEL: Hello and welcome to this live end-of-year episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language. I’m Daniel Midgley. Let’s meet the team. First up, linguist and researcher, Hedvig Skirgård. Hedvig, would you rather have a dirty soda or a microretirement?

HEDVIG: Fuck, what’s a dirty soda? We did this earlier. Microretirement for sure. Wait, microretirement was a bad… It’s a funny word for unemployment, right?

DANIEL: It was like taking time off or it’s what we used to call a holiday before we broke ourselves…

HEDVIG: I would love microretirement.

DANIEL: …on the machine.

HEDVIG: Yes. That sounds very nice.

DANIEL: Yeah. Okay. And yeah, your dirty soda is. It’s like got creamer in there. Maybe some coconut stuff.

HEDVIG: Oh, yes, I remember now. Yes, yes, yes.

DANIEL: Popular in Mormon circles, apparently.

HEDVIG: I’ve tried that. It’s not that bad.

DANIEL: “Not that bad” is what we’re going for here, huh? Okay. Yeah, cool, awesome. And we also have media studies teacher and all-around great guy and karaoke expert, Ben Ainslie. Ben, would you rather be an AI vegan or a protest frog? What’s your fancy?

BEN: Ooh.

DANIEL: I know, right?

BEN: That’s a toughie. I think the protest frog edges it out because, geez Louise, the inflatable frog costume is just the cutest. It’s just so darned cute. And just deep down underneath my calloused exterior, I just want to be a cutie patootie.

DANIEL: You are, Ben. You are. You didn’t even see me in my costume. I can lend you the costume if you like.

BEN: Excellent. I look forward to wearing something that is no doubt 17 sizes too big for me.

DANIEL: I really thought that protest frog would do better. [BEN CHUCKLES] I really did. I did. It was a bit endangered. All right, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. For this episode, we’re joined by our friends and listeners. We’re counting down our Words of the Week of the Year and everyone’s words of the year. We love the WOTYs. They remind us that language is alive and that language creation and language change are constant and ongoing. Those are the lessons that I get from the Words of the Year. Am I off base here or is that about right?

HEDVIG: No, I think that’s a good point.

BEN: I mostly just hate the acronym, WOTY, because it’s blech.

DANIEL: [CHUCKLES] WOTY.

HEDVIG: This year I’m going to be excited about seeing things that aren’t nouns. I think Word of the Years generally tend to be dominated by nouns because there are new concepts and new things and I want to see new verbs minimally or maybe new other things, but I don’t think we’ll see that much, but we’ll see how we go.

DANIEL: It’s the constructions for me. I know everything’s a construction, but like the multiword constructions and the phrasal templates, I’m all about those phrasal templates and I love the combining forms and we’ve got a few here on this episode.

BEN: About as close as words get to memes, really. I think that’s why you like them. [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: Yeah, that’s a good point.

HEDVIG: Well, I should say that’s such a funny way of phrasing it.

DANIEL: No, that’s good.

HEDVIG: Yeah, because they’re templates and you can slot different things in. Yeah, that’s smart.

BEN: Yeah, 100%.

HEDVIG: Mm-hmm.

DANIEL: Yep. But also, they’re a conspiracy on the part of big dictionary to sell more dictionaries.

BEN: Just because the word, big dick, is in there, it makes me laugh. I’m sorry, I’m not a very smart man.

DANIEL: No, it’s 5 AM here in Perth. You get automatic… You can say whatever you want.

BEN: This is before my beach swim, Daniel. This is tough.

DANIEL: This is Ben before dark… before light. Okay, if you’re listening to the audio version of this episode, there’s also a video version on YouTube where you’re going to see our listeners’ very amusing chat messages scrolling on by. Hey, if you are already on video, why don’t you smash the like button so more people will see us?

Now, to our dear patrons who are here with us, everybody in the Zoom room, you’re here at our live show because you’re a patron. Thank you for being patrons. We hope you’re enjoying the bonuses, like live shows, bonus episodes, the Discord access. I’m having a lot of fun with it. But if you’re listening or watching and you’re not a patron, even a free one, we’d love to have you on board. Come see us at patreon.com/becauselangpod. All right, we ready to get to the words?

BEN: Let’s do it.

DANIEL: Let’s start with words from other language bodies, like dictionaries and word groups, not just in English, but all over the world. We’ll start with dictionary.com and their Word of the Year was… Everybody together. 6-7.

HEDVIG: Oh.

DANIEL: [LAUGHS]

BEN: Oh, dear.

HEDVIG: Yeah, I come around on 6-7.

BEN: That’s because you’re punk rock, man.

HEDVIG: Well, it’s part of my general contrarian streak that if…

BEN: Yeah, 100%.

HEDVIG: …the majority of people don’t like it, I’m like… But then, someone pointed out that it’s a fun rhythm thing that not everything else is, which I think is fun. It’s a bit like badger-badger or something like… It’s 6-7. It’s not 6-7, right?

BEN: It has a musical quality.

HEDVIG: Yeah, that’s fun to me.

DANIEL: James in chat has just pointed out that the Atlantic did an article about how 6-7 is uncool now because of the olds. It’s the article… We’ll slap it up on the show notes. It’s Ian Bogost in the Atlantic. It’s called “6-7 Is Six Feet Under. Grown-ups Killed It.” I’ll just read a quote from it. “6-7 is just a lasso looped by fate around two adjacent integers on the number line. It hides no secret payload of violence, sex, sacrilege, or anything whatsoever. This emptiness surely helped 6-7’s rise. Hearing it might irritate parents or teachers, but that irritation has no cause and therefore merits no reproach.”

BEN: Yeah. When kids at school ask what my favourite food is, I often say that pho, Vietnamese beef noodle soup is my favourite food for this simple principle that the price to deliciousness ratio is really tough to beat because it’s just so very cheap most of the places you go and it’s so very tasty. And I feel like 6-7 is that, but in annoyance to a genuine menace, like the most annoyance to the least genuine menace of anything in the world. It’s so benign and yet so annoying.

[LAUGHTER]

HEDVIG: Does it not fall into a similar category to, like, [IN A SINGSONG VOICE] na-na-na-na-na…

BEN: Yeah, I guess so.

HEDVIG: …which there’s a melody, repetitive thing, not just words, which is fun and annoying. Extra annoying.

DANIEL: Well, people have pointed out everyone can do it, it leaves no one out. I got a couple of young Alphas at home. Now, Generation Alpha, the oldest you can be is 15. So, 15 and younger as of this recording, December 2025. And it leaves nobody out. It’s something that everybody can participate in. It’s very inclusive. But I think the thing that I love about it, and I just kind of realised this, it’s like seeing Generation Alpha come into their own as a group.

BEN: Yeah, it’s their first thing.

DANIEL: It’s their first thing. And we’re going to see a lot of things from this generation but…

BEN: [LAUGHS] God help us if this is the standard. [DANIEL LAUGHS]

HEDVIG: You all forgot SKIBIDI?

BEN: Oh, true. Yeah, but you know what? I would be…

DANIEL: I feel like that’s Generation Z. I don’t feel like that’s an Alpha thing.

BEN: No. I would put that together. But do you know what I would say, Hedvig, is I reckon that’s a one-two punch. As SKIBIDI waned, 6-7 came in, and I feel like almost to fill the Cold War power vacuum that was SKIBIDI that left it behind.

DANIEL: Maybe. Maybe I’m wrong about the timing, but I feel like this is… We’re really seeing them doing their own thing that we don’t get and that we didn’t create and I love that for them.

BEN: It’s The Mighty Boosh of them.

DANIEL: Yes. One episode of which I have watched. Let’s see, Dictionary.com also mentioned BROLIGARCHY. That was one of theirs. An oligarchy is a system of government or society ruled by few people. And when those people are tech bros who have gotten control, well, that’s fairly bad.

Let’s move on to Collins Dictionary, who were the next out the gate. Theirs was VIBE CODING. Hedvig, you do a bit of vibe coding.

HEDVIG: Excuse me?

DANIEL: You have done a bit of vibe coding? I thought you were an enthusiastic vibe coder.

HEDVIG: I sometimes talk to large language models about debugging my code, but I don’t let it code for me, if that makes sense.

DANIEL: Okay.

HEDVIG: [BEN LAUGHS] Does that qualify as vibe coding? Oh, no. It does.

BEN: What I’ve got in my head now is a mental image, and it’s completely unfair and I’m sure not accurate, but is you just pounding the keyboard the way a toddler might when it’s put in front of them by a parent to keep them busy, and then giving that to ChatGPT and being like, “What’s wrong with my code?”

DANIEL: [LAUGHS] And then, it just does it.

HEDVIG: So sometimes, things break in unexpected ways and you can scroll through Stack Overflow and documentation and things. Or, you can query a large language model who did that for you. Now, this is my only use case in my life really for generative AI, and I already feel uncomfortable with that. So, yeah, but Daniel, VIBE CODING is like a very derogatory term.

DANIEL: I know, I know.

HEDVIG: Yeah.

DANIEL: So, here’s the definition. “The use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to write computer code.” There’s a note. “The term was popularised by Andrej Karpathy, former director of AI at Tesla, founding engineer at OpenAI, to describe how AI enables creative output. While he could ‘forget that the code even exists.’” Yeah, you’re going to forget that it exists until it’s debugging time, right? You will remember.

HEDVIG: So, the thing that it’s sort of good at is small, localised problems. You have a couple of lines of code, something unexpected has happened. It spots like, “Oh, this function actually expects this to be that.” That it can kind of solve. What it’s bad at is anything sort of larger than that. So, what happens when you have multiple scripts, multiple modules, you’re trying to query large databases and you want to build a cohesive infrastructure, that’s what I understand, they’re not always very good at.

DANIEL: Okay.

BEN: I have very, very limited experience with coding. But yet again, it just sounds like the best use case in this particular instance sounds like the best use case in nearly all of these instances, which is a highly educated and well-trained person can use this tool effectively to help them. And outside of that, it’s just like either wildly ineffective or wildly dangerous because the person can’t find any of the things that are just like glaringly terrible and obvious and not good. And you just make a house of cards where one like tiny little piece can fall out and then the whole thing’s cooked.

HEDVIG: Software is already like that when humans code. [LAUGHTER] So, like, adding AI to code it doesn’t really help.

DANIEL: Once again, we have a situation where the problems caused by AI are also problems that we’ve always kind of had. Please don’t use it for large projects. It is a good use case in some ways because you can check the output and when you can check, that’s better than not being able to check.

They also mentioned AURA FARMING, the deliberate cultivation of a distinctive and charismatic persona. Good on you, Collins, for using AURA. We had AURA as one of ours, but we didn’t really get AURA FARMING, which is one of my favourite kinds of farming, second only to engagement farming.

BEN: Here was a fun one. I had to explain that to my partner who lectures in medicine at the universidad, because she’s moved universities and she is mentor or lecturing to undergrads. So, they are humans that I like hand off, essentially, and she acquires them just not one year, one summer later. And she’s very surprised and overwhelmed by how young an 18-year-old is. I think she’s been out of that loop for [LAUGHS] quite a long time. So, she will come home, she’s like, “What’s aura farming?” And I’m like, “Ah, yes, child, take a seat by the fireplace. Grandpa will tell you a story.”

HEDVIG: But can you explain it to me again? Because it sounds just like performing coolness.

BEN: It is.

DANIEL: It is.

BEN: 100% that’s what it is.

DANIEL: Yeah but…

HEDVIG: And what is…? I mean, what’s the prob…? Maybe I’m dumb.

BEN: There’s no problem. AURA FARMING is a thing that exists and it’s like one of those… someone made fetch happen, right? Someone found a new word for a thing that people have done for a long, long, long, long time, which is try and cultivate status.

DANIEL: Manufacture your coolness.

HEDVIG: Okay. I mean, I don’t want people on the public internet to know when I’m uncool. Like, I think it kind of makes sense.

DANIEL: You’re never uncool.

BEN: You have the worst possible hobby you could have because you just sit and talk and people listen.

HEDVIG: I mean, I’m cool most of the time maybe, I don’t think… I think I’m less cool in conversations with my friends.

BEN: I agree, Hedvig. When you find yourself having to say cool, that’s usually a sign that a person is very cool.

HEDVIG: [LAUGHS] Okay, all right.

DANIEL: I just put a poll up. Is Hedvig cool? React.

BEN: Oh, no. Oh, dear.

HEDVIG: Mm-hmm.

DANIEL: This is my own kind of… I’m Hedvig aura farming, like, on your behalf. Let’s go on, Macquarie. AI SLOP was their Word of The Year, chosen by a committee, a good committee as well. A select committee. The Economist picked it too. Let’s see, AI SLOP. There was a lot of us in the Discord who wanted to put it as one of the words, which of course you could have and it would have won if it got enough votes. AI SLOP was one of our… It was our second-place word last year, which means that we weren’t wrong. We were just early. But early unfortunately, as with investing, early is wrong. There you go.

BEN: [LAUGHS] Yeah.

DANIEL: But it’s a good one. They also chose CLANKER, an artificial intelligence driven robot which completes tasks that are normally put… It’s a robot. It’s a derogatory term for a robot.

BEN: Talking about Gen Alpha, that is a weirdly niche Gen Alpha thing. So, I don’t know if you know the legacy of CLANKER, Daniel, but it’s essentially Star Wars’s N-word, the droids.

DANIEL: Yep.

BEN: And so, it’s risen in popularity because I think Gen Alpha boys predominantly are like, “Ooh, I’m going to do a wink-wink, nudge-nudge with my friends. And I’m kind of like sort of saying the N word, but, like, none of the normies will get it.” Yeah, wow, that’s a deep cut.

DANIEL: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, gee. I’m sure that one’s in the Historical Dictionary of Sci-Fi. And I feel like one day when they do gain something like intelligence or sentience, if that ever happens, we’ll be called upon to answer for these slurs that we make. “You’ve got a lot of movies about robots taking over the world.”

HEDVIG: Ah, I’m not buying into this.

DANIEL: Okay, fine.

BEN: And welcome our insect overlords.

DANIEL: Also, one of Macquarie’s words was MEDICAL MISOGYNY. Entrenched prejudice against women in the context of medical treatment and knowledge, especially in the area of reproductive health. Not taking women’s concerns seriously or being dismissive of certain conditions.

BEN: Was there some big Australian news stories that I missed about this? Because we are aware that this is a thing, but…

DANIEL: I think it’s just ongoing.

BEN: Usually, Words of the Year… Words of the Year usually have some sort of… I don’t know, like this… I have not come across this, this year, that’s an interesting one.

DANIEL: I haven’t either. This was the first time I’ve heard it but I’m willing to recognise it as an ongoing serious problem.

BEN: Absolutely.

HEDVIG: Well, it’s also… I mean, you don’t need to be explained what it means. MEDICAL MISOGYNY, you can just look at the parts and you’re like, “Oh, it’s very certainly this.”

BEN: It’s that thing that we know.

HEDVIG: Yeah. Whereas some of the other words are, like, you need… They’re, I would say, newer in that sense as words.

DANIEL: I feel like when it’s a committee that chooses the words, they want to do a thing, like they want to make a statement. Whereas when it’s listener driven, then there’s less pressure that way.

BEN: Okay.

HEDVIG: When it’s listener driven, I think there’s also more of a Boaty-McBoatface pull to just do silly stuff.

DANIEL: The silliness. The playfulness.

HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: Let’s see, Oxford. We’re going on to Oxford. They had three choices. BIOHACK was one of them, AURA FARMING, and RAGE BAIT. 30,000 people made their votes, and the winner was RAGE BAIT. Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrageous so that it drives engagement. Let’s talk about RAGE BAIT for a second because we have had ANGERTAINMENT as one of our words a while ago. And as a public linguist, it’s something that I’m often trying to get tempted into it by producers who really just want to fill time and get engagement. And, boy, you can get a lot of engagement by saying, “What’s your least favourite word? What’s that term you hate? Blah, blah, blah.” And people just pile in.

HEDVIG: Why is it always… we talked about this before. Why is it always MOIST in English? It’s also the weird meme.

BEN: No. Yes. Yeah, I put MOIST alongside… and I’m so sorry to the room and to the wider listening public, but I’m just going to be really quite rude for a second. The hating MOIST is as boring and just utterly devoid of personality as having strong opinions about pineapple on pizza. It’s one of these weird…

DANIEL: Oxford commas.

HEDVIG: 100%!

BEN: …shibboleths…

HEDVIG: Exactly.

BEN: …where a person is just like, “Oh my god, you have pineapple on pizza? I have been taught that it’s okay to super hate on this. So now, I can have one slightly not very controversial opinion that I’ll hold really strongly.” And it’s just like, “Dude, it’s whatever.” Like, fucking sweet and sour. Okay, sure, bad, good, who cares?

Same thing with MOIST. People are like, “Oh don’t say that word.” I’m like, “Stacy, if you can tell me a more appropriate word to describe a well-put-together cake, I’d love to hear it.”

DANIEL: We have covered MOIST a bunch of times, including the fact that in Swedish people do the same thing to FUKTIG.

HEDVIG: FUKTIG. Yeah.

DANIEL: Even though it sounds nothing like it to go, “Eww.”

HEDVIG: It sounds sort of weird… [BLOWS A RASPBERRY] I don’t understand.

DANIEL: Yeah. Anyway, I got to tell a story. I have a family relation who always… when I see him, I don’t see him often. But when I do, he kind of gives me a little newsy thing that he’s thinking about. He tests me out on a thing that he thinks is interesting to see how I’ll react, which, I guess, is nice. He’s like, “What do you think about this thing that I saw in my newsfeed?” And I think it was something like men not being allowed to work at childcare centers or something like that. [ONOMATOPOEIA] Some kind of misogyny against men or something like that.

HEDVIG: Oh, okay.

DANIEL: Misandry. And I said, “I haven’t seen the story, but that’s rage bait, bro. Don’t fall for it. And it’s just designed to make you angry.” If it’s designed to make you angry, it’s not good. And that goes for language, too. They’ll try to get me into stories like that sometimes on radio stations, and I always decline because you want me to hate on language. You think it’s harmless because we’re hating on language, but that’s somebody’s language. And so, rage bait is not really where we want to go.

Okay. Cambridge Dictionary, their Word of the Year was… and I thought they were all pretty good until we got to here. PARASOCIAL.

BEN: You don’t like PARASOCIAL?

DANIEL: I like PARASOCIAL. I just don’t feel like it’s… I think it was the Word of the… it was a Digital Word of the Year for the American Dialect Society back in 2021. It was nominated then.

BEN: So, you’re like it’s over the hill.

DANIEL: I feel like it is. I don’t know. Chat?

HEDVIG: But it’s had staying power. You’re right, that PARASOCIAL has been around for a really long time, and as podcasters who also listen to podcasts, we think about parasocial things a lot. And I think it’s interesting that it has had staying power. And I think that says something [BEN LAUGHS] about the kind of content and entertainment we’re using across multiple channels.

BEN: Dustin is just like, “I like PARASOCIAL. Don’t you like it, my dear friend, Daniel?”

[LAUGHTER]

HEDVIG: Yeah.

DANIEL: I will say that that Sandman is just that kind of friend to me.

BEN: No, I think… I reckon, yeah, maybe it is a Word of the Year, no, but what was the Word of the Year either last year or the year before that I just hated, Daniel? Like, a real flash in the pan. Like, meme-y… There was something, and I…

DANIEL: Was it -USSY? The combining form?

HEDVIG: RAWDOGGING?

BEN: No, I think it might have been -USSY as a productive form. And for me, PARASOCIAL is like the exact opposite of that. It’s not sexy and it’s not fun or anything, but it is actually probably really, really, really keyed into something that’s quite profound socially for us and culturally. This is here to stay, not just as a word, but as a phenomenon within our society. So, I think that’s probably why it’s kind of rearing its head again.

DANIEL: I think… Yeah, media has this thing. When you see people, our reptile brain goes “friend.” And so, it’s an exploit. Just like generative AI text is an exploit, “That’s a human.” When you see people on media, it’s like, “That’s somebody I know.”

BEN: Yeah. If not friend, why friend-sounding? [LAUGHTER]

HEDVIG: Ben, you don’t want to see what Dustin just posted in the chat.

DANIEL: Let’s make up the word that Ben will just hate the most.

BEN: [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: The Australian National Dictionary Centre didn’t have a word this year, but that’s okay because they’re picking themselves up and keeping going, and they still exist thanks to an anonymous donor. And that’s [CHUCKLES] the important thing. We love you, ANDC. We’ll see you next year.

The Canadian… now, we’re going Canadian. Canadian National Dictionary had… this was pointed out by Ariaflame way back in March and James, the Canadian Word of the Year is MAPLEWASH, which… -WASHING was our word last year.

BEN: Okay.

HEDVIG: That’s a good one.

BEN: I like this. I think I can guess this.

DANIEL: Go ahead.

BEN: To sort of perhaps somewhat underhandedly give the impression that something is, like, super Canadian. To rebrand it as, like, really, [TRYING A CANADIAN ACCENT] “Oh, look how mapley it is, eh?” I don’t know, that was terrible. Sorry. Sorry, Canadians.

DANIEL: Pretty good Canadian accent there, Ben. That’s correct. It’s like slapping a maple leaf on your product when you actually didn’t make it in Canada and haven’t for a super long time.

HEDVIG: Isn’t it also connected to the… there was that thing with the Americano and the… do you guys remember what I’m talking about?

DANIEL: I remember the Canadiano, and that was one of ours this year.

HEDVIG: Yes, but that wasn’t maplewashing. That’s just like freedom cabbage. Like, that’s just saying fuck you to the US.

DANIEL: A rebranding, that’s right.

HEDVIG: That’s different from maplewashing.

DANIEL: There are lots of ways to say fuck you to the US, like not going there.

BEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: The original toot that I could find on Mastodon was from Ian K. Rogers, I’ll have a link on the show notes. “I’m going to start calling this MAPLETURFING. Fuck US goods pretending to be Canadian. Campbell’s soup sold in Canada now has a maple leaf on the label. Their website has had a maple leaf next to their logo since October 2023. Campbell’s has not had Canadian manufacturing since 2018 when they shut down their last Canadian plant.” He called it MAPLETURFING, which is interesting. There’s a strong resemblance between -TURFING and -WASHING, I think. We got some competing forms here.

HEDVIG: I think -WASHING is better because -TURFING has to do with grassroots movement. And you can’t say that Campbell’s soup can design is a grassroots…

DANIEL: Yeah. There’s a subtle difference. They’re both deceptive, but they are different things. Okay, other languages besides English. Japan. Japan’s Word of the Year as announced on nippon.com is…

BEN: Yoku-nana.

DANIEL: …is, here it is, “Hataraite, hataraite, hataraite, hataraite, hataraite mairimasu,” Which means, “I pledge to work, work, work, work.” Spoken by the new Prime Minister, Takaichi Sanae, who has been criticised for stating that she intends to, “do away with work-life balance.” That’s in translation, that quote. It’s coming up against a feeling that we don’t need to break ourselves against the machine and that there needs to be work-life balance, so.

BEN: I just… Wow. If you were to ask me one nation that just categorically doesn’t currently have work-life balance, Japan would be really high on that list.

HEDVIG: Yeah, I…

DANIEL: Historically. I wonder though. I haven’t been there… I haven’t been in touch with Japanese culture for a while.

BEN: No, but this is what assailing a dominant cultural artifact looks like, right? When something is as well entrenched as salaryman culture and just working yourself to the bone, the way that Japanese work culture is set up, even the slightest attempt or approach to assail that edifice is going to meet… the powers that be are going to be like, “Absolutely fucking not.” Like a beaver with running water, they just absolutely can’t stand it.

DANIEL: This is why we have to fight power, because power never retreats willingly. Of any kind.

HEDVIG: I’m surprised that this was a thing a politician said. I thought that you could be against work-life balance in practice as a politician, but I thought it would be unpopular to say it because you still want people to vote for you.

BEN: No, it’s a conservative dog whistle, right? So, working yourself to death… I’m speaking sort of a little bit out of pocket here, but I presume working yourself to death is one of the artifacts of what it is to be “real Japanese” or “truly Japanese.” Like, “This is what we do, this is who we are.” And so, this new prime minister is a lady prime minister. And I think that is relevant to this discussion. I’m not just saying that arbitrarily because, much as Margaret Thatcher had the cover of womanhood to sort of drape actually truly insane, full-on conservatism in the cloth of femininity, I think there’s a little bit of that going on here as well. This is like a Japanese woman who’s like, ” I’m a mother, so if I’m okay with working myself to death, everyone should be.”

DANIEL: Also, a word, actually… This is the Kanji of the Year from Coconut on our Discord. Kanji of the Year is bear, and I think this is most often pronounced as kuma. At least, animals are sometimes done in Katakana, that special script that is a little bit different and syllable by syllable. But there is a kanji for bear. And the reason is because there have been some increasingly dangerous encroachments by wild bears into human communities around Japan and they have made the news. So, bear is…

HEDVIG: Hmm.

BEN: When I went to Japan, we stayed in rural Japan and I went for a bit of a wander and I came across an electric fence for bears. And when I say an electric fence, I literally just mean like a wire strung across the ground. But yeah, I was just like, “Ooh, what’s this?” [ONOMATOPOEIA]

DANIEL: Oh, my. Oh, my.

BEN: It’s not a lethal thing. I don’t think you get to make electric fences lethal pretty much anywhere in the world because that would just be horrendously dangerous. But much like me, I think the bear touches it and goes, “Oh, fuck.”

DANIEL: “I’m not going there.”

BEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Okay. German. Help me, Hedvig.

HEDVIG: Mm. Yes, I clicked on the list here. So, it’s KI-Ära. Oh, how do you pronounce it? So, this is AI ERA.

DANIEL: AI ERA.

HEDVIG: It’s Künstlich…

DANIEL: Künstlicher?

HEDVIG: Künstlicher Intelligenz. So, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ERA is the number one… I think that’s just quite self-explanatory.

DANIEL: This is kind of a theme.

BEN: Yeah, yeah, that’s what it says on the tin.

DANIEL: Yep. I noticed, however, the German Youth Words of the Year, they’re the most fun. They’re voted on by lots and lots of young people. There were three. The big one was DAS CRAZY. Das crazy.

HEDVIG: Yes, I saw this.

DANIEL: Are you hearing this?

HEDVIG: It was in some of my group chats. No, I’m absolutely not. But I also don’t spend any time with any German young people.

DANIEL: But you’re still cool.

HEDVIG: I wouldn’t… but I’m confused by that comment.

DANIEL: That’s a discourse particle you’re saying. It’s like something you say when somebody tells a big story and you’re like, “Wow, that’s wild,” or “Huh, how about that?”

BEN: But is it sarcastic?

HEDVIG: Yeah.

DANIEL: No, it doesn’t have to be. It can, in my understanding…

BEN: The way you said it, it sounded incredibly rude and sarcastic.

DANIEL: [LAUGHS] My understanding is that it’s got… help me out, German people who are familiar with this, familiarity with the saying, but it’s kind of like, “Huh, that’s interesting. Oh, wow.”

BEN: I think we do this in English, right? Like…

HEDVIG: “Yeah, that’s crazy.” Yeah. It’s just that.

BEN: I don’t think it’s hugely complicated.

DANIEL: And it doesn’t have to be a wild story. It can just be a comprehension check / verbal cue.

BEN: Yeah, okay. Like, “Keep going. I’m passing up my turn,” kind of thing.

DANIEL: Yes.

HEDVIG: A little bit like what we’ve had earlier, like CHOPPED and COOKED.

DANIEL: It just gets milder over time.

BEN: Mm-hmm. Okay.

DANIEL: Okay. The other two were gönnen, the verb, to goon, which nice to see that coming up. Lovely.

BEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: And then…

HEDVIG: Do you want to explain what that is, Daniel?

DANIEL: Ah, let’s see if it pops up later.

BEN: Ah, there we go. Oh, look. What a showman, folks. Just peppering that anticipation.

DANIEL: Came up with that on the fly. And my favourite one was CHECKST DU? Am I saying that right, Hedvig? Checkst du?

HEDVIG: Checkst du?

DANIEL: Checkst du.

HEDVIG: So, it’s the verb CHECK conjugated for second person singular. Checkst du?

DANIEL: That’s it.

HEDVIG: I have never heard of it. So, I don’t know what it means, but I can guess.

BEN: Are we saying CZECH as in like the place, or CHECK as in you should check something?

HEDVIG: Check as in I check something.

BEN: Okay.

HEDVIG: Yeah.

DANIEL: It’s the way of saying, “Do you understand?” or, “Do you get me?”

BEN: Okay.

DANIEL: It would be like saying, “Do you dig?”

BEN: You dig? Yeah.

DANIEL: “You know what I mean?” It’s a you know what I mean. It’s a discourse pragmatic marker, and it’s a very useful one. It’s comprehension checks.

BEN: That’s fun.

DANIEL: Sorry, Sandman. No, I’m not edging gooning. But I feel… Let me just say, also, we are looking forward to a Word of the Year, a WOTY vote that hasn’t happened yet. And that is the American Dialect Society WOTY from 2025, which is a… The oldest one of these. The oldest Word of the Year vote and one of the biggest voted on by language lovers. We’ll try to have some experts on when we come back in February to talk about the Words of the Year there.

All right. And now, I think it’s time to do some Related or Not. Our theme comes from Ste who made…

BEN: Oh, yes.

DANIEL: We’ve heard the short one from Ste. And that was awesome. But now, it’s time for the long version. Get out your lighters, everybody. Let’s hear it.

[LATEST RELATED OR NOT THEME]

DANIEL: Oh, Ste, the fourth Because Language person. Hedvig, tell us about the creation of that. Were you present at the birth?

HEDVIG: [LAUGHS] No. What happened was everyone else was sending in jingles and he plays and writes music. So, I was like, “You should do one. And I think Daniel would like that.” And then, he just, a few days later, sent me the audio files. That’s all that happened. I’m not involved in that process.

DANIEL: So good.

HEDVIG: But I’m very proud.

DANIEL: Yeah, it’s great.

BEN: You can tell him from me, so much better than Coldplay.

DANIEL: Really worked on that chorus. I could tell.

HEDVIG: Yeah. Yeah.

BEN: So much better.

DANIEL: Let’s get to our first one. This one is from our friend, Arjun, a student. Here we go. Don’t vote until you’ve heard you know both sides of it.

BEN: How have I not thought of this one before?

DANIEL: WINK and BLINK. [DANIEL LAUGHS] They are part of the same kind of action. They rhyme…

BEN: That’s all you need.

DANIEL: …but there might be some traps here. Argh, okay, my guess was yes, obviously.

BEN: Okay. That was my intuition, straight away, just like landed in my eyeballs and I was like, “Yeah, surely, surely.”

HEDVIG: I think this might be baits. And also…

DANIEL: Arjun wouldn’t do that.

HEDVIG: And Ditte can confirm if it’s the same in Danish. But vink is like to wave your hand.

DANIEL: Is it a quick wave?

HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah, it’s a short wave. It’s a fast movement, yeah. Let’s just check my brain. So, I feel like maybe that means something. I don’t know. The problem is that the words for WINK and BLINK in Swedish are vinka or blinka, which also sound really similar. So, but at least the meaning is a slight difference, so I’m going to be contrarian and say, no, they’re not related.

DANIEL: Okay, it’s time for you to vote, all you dear listeners. The votes are rolling in, but they’re still… We still don’t have… Oh, yeah, they’re climbing up there. It could be an onomatopoeia thing, that they grow together.

BEN: That noise that our eyes make.

DANIEL: [CHUCKLES] The noise that we attribute to our eyes. Well, I don’t know. Let me try it. Does it make a noise?

BEN: No.

HEDVIG: There is a tiny noise sometimes.

DANIEL: Maybe like one decibel.

BEN: Yeah.

HEDVIG: We can all try it out.

BEN: How to get a whole room full of people just [ONOMATOPOEIA]

HEDVIG: I feel like the straining of the muscles in my face is making a larger sound in my ears than the blinking, if that makes sense.

BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: Can anyone bear down on their muscles in their head and cause a rumbling sound?

BEN: Yes, I can do that.

DANIEL: What?

BEN: Yeah.

HEDVIG: Oh, I can hear like a straining sound. Is that the rumbling?

BEN: You hear like a whoomp.

DANIEL: Low-frequency bass noise. Okay, we have some votes. We’re going to end this poll and let’s share the results. Looks like 20% of people said they were related, 80% not related.

BEN: Ooh, damn.

DANIEL: You people are going to be geniuses if you get this right. Now, we think of blinking as using that reflex to close and open our eyes quickly. But it has… as Hedvig mentioned, it’s meant a lot of things over the years, like just glancing or looking quickly or even moving quickly. So that’s blinking. It didn’t actually mean that reflex until quite late.

Then, there’s WINK. I also remember that to WINK used to mean to close both eyes or even to cover your eyes like a blindfold, which is why when you are HOODWINKED, you’ve been blinded because somebody’s put a hood over your head and so that’s where that word comes from.

BEN: Aaaah, that makes sense. Okay.

DANIEL: We only see from one… It’s a super old word, as we can see by all the Germanic reflexes there… Huh, reflex. But one, we start seeing it meaning to wink one eye only, only since the 1300s. Well, these words seem to be not related to each other.

BEN: You savvy folk. You absolute bastards.

DANIEL: We have the smartest listeners. BLINK comes from Old English blican, to shine or to glitter. And WINK is from Old English, wincian, to close one’s eyes, but they go back to different words. And they may have grown together because they are semantically related or just for onomatopoeia reasons.

BEN: Daniel, can I… This has made me think of one to table for later discussion.

DANIEL: Interesting.

BEN: RIPPLE and WRINKLE.

DANIEL: Ooh, okay, it’s on the record. Let’s go to our second one. This one is from Sullivan, who says, “Hello. I’ve been listening to your podcast for a few years now. It’s definitely one of my favourites. My boyfriend sent me this text about the words GOSSIP and GOSPEL, and I thought it might make an…

BEN: Ooh.

HEDVIG: Mmmm.

DANIEL: …interesting Related or Not.” Boyfriend says, “I just made the linguistic connection between the gospels in the Bible and the word ‘gossip.’” [CLEARS THROAT] I’m guessing there’s probably a root, word meaning to talk about someone else in there somewhere. So, I guess the gospels are sort of like holy gossip about a friend and mentor. I thought that was neat. It would also be neat if the similarity between the two words was a coincidence. Thank you for all you do. You bring a lot of joy into my life.” That’s Sullivan saying that to us, not the boyfriend saying it to them.

BEN: End quote. [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: End quote. And so here we go: GOSPEL and GOSSIP. Now, I don’t want to focus on the -PEL and the -SIP part, because I think we could say those are pretty obviously maybe from different sources. But what about the GOS-? What about the GOS-? Are the two GOS’s related? So, let’s hear your answers.

BEN: I want to throw a third thing in here just because, why the fuck not? GOSHAWK, the animal.

DANIEL: You mean like a GOSHAWK?

HEDVIG: So, that’s just the kind of thing that looks a bit like a goose.

BEN: I don’t think that’s where the GOS- from GOSHAWK comes from, no. Yeah, I’d be interested if maybe a goshawk screeches in a particular way, that’s in some way related to talking? This is just a pure Ben Ainslie silliness, but yeah, I’m going related.

DANIEL: Okay.

HEDVIG: Or it’s related to GOSLING.

BEN: Oh, true. Yeah, okay, maybe. Okay.

DANIEL: Small goose.

HEDVIG: And whatever gosling…

BEN: Yeah, okay, shut up Ben.

DANIEL: Ditte mentions the etymology of GOSSIP has come up before, either on here or somewhere else I’ve seen. This is a fairly well-known etymology. I thought a lot of people would sort of have run into GOSSIP before.

HEDVIG: I haven’t. Well, my problem is I don’t keep up to date on like English etymology really. I just used to cheat of knowing other languages and I can’t think of anything, maybe I’m just not thinking hard enough.

BEN: My unusual approach gives me nothing here.

HEDVIG: [CHUCKLES] I can’t think of anything.

DANIEL: I think I’ve had this one in a course on language change in historical linguistics. So, I think I knew this one back in my master’s days. But I don’t think they’re related. I don’t think the two GOS’s are related. They’re independent.

BEN: No, I’m not doing well then.

DANIEL: What was your answer, Hedvig? It’s no from me.

HEDVIG: I guess that they are related because it felt contrarian because you, the big authority, said something and I will just say something else.

DANIEL: Fight the power.

BEN: Be wrong with me.

HEDVIG: [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: Let’s show those results. We’ve got 75% of everyone thought they were related. It’s a 25% not, which is very close to the three of us.

Okay, GOSPEL means good news. So, GOOD is the root of that one. Now, GOSSIP is interesting because a gossip is a godsib, a godsibling, a very close relation. When a woman was having a baby — this is part of the story — when a woman was having a baby, everyone, all the close friends would be there waiting. You’d be waiting there with your besties for anything to happen. They’re godsibs. And they would talk about stuff because the meaning jumps. The meaning jumped from the godsibs, the people, to the talk that they were doing. And at first it meant idle talk, but then it got kind of nasty as things went on and it became, like, mean rumours about someone, but the root of that one is GOD.

So now, we have to take it back to GOOD and GOD. Are they related?

BEN: Ooh.

DANIEL: And they’re not. They’re different words. The two GOS’s are not the same. When you have GOD, that goes back to a word that possibly refers to an entity that you invoke when you’re sacrificing stuff or maybe the libation that you’re pouring out on the ground and that meaning jumps to GOD, that’s what that word came from. And then, GOOD is a really different word which means fitting or right or appropriate, so GOOD and GOD…

BEN: Oh, okay. Fascinating. [CHUCKLES]

DANIEL: …are not related. And the two GOS’s are quite different.

This last one is from James. It’s PROPHET, PROFESSOR and PROFIT. How did you notice these? What made that interesting to you?

JAMES: I don’t remember specifically what got me thinking about it, but it was the PROPHET, like the person speaking, I don’t know, the future or the word of god or whatever, like that prophet. And PROFESSOR seemed like, “Oh, maybe they were both people who are explaining things and talking about things.” Are these related? Seems plausible. I think I didn’t even know which one I had… I guess on. And then, through PROFIT, I remember after doing the research on the other two. So, PROFIT, like the extra money, the money that you get.

DANIEL: Extra money that you get. Okay, thank you.

JAMES: Yeah.

HEDVIG: Mmm.

DANIEL: Now, there are a few choices here. You got PROPHET, PROFESSOR, and PROFIT, the business money. You could say they’re all related. You could say the PRO’s are related, but nothing else. Or you could say nothing is related.

BEN: Can you explain what your logic is of the middle option where they all start with PRO?

DANIEL: You’ve got PRO-, you’ve got PRO-, and you’ve got PRO-.

BEN: Oh, I see what you mean. Do we think there is a prefix happening here?

DANIEL: Yes. And if so, can you figure out sort of where this? What it means? And why it’s there?

HEDVIG: Well, so first of all, when you first read these out, I thought you said PROPHET, the noun, and then PROFIT the verb. But you meant PROPHET as in, like god’s prophet for the first one.

DANIEL: The holy PROPHET’s a person who… Yeah.

BEN: Yeah. Pro-phet /fet/ and pro-fit /fit/.

HEDVIG: So I had to do a little…

DANIEL: And then the PROFIT, the money stuff. And then, PROFESSOR, somebody who, I guess, professes?

BEN: Yeah, that’s what I would have assumed. But maybe PROFESS came afterwards, I’m not sure.

HEDVIG: Well, you have PROFESS and CONFESS.

DANIEL: That’s interesting, isn’t it? Are there any other -FESSes? [CHUCKLES] French speakers are sniggering.

HEDVIG: Other fesses.

BEN: I’m going to stick my… I’m going to go super early, and that’s worked out super well for me the previous two times. So, let’s just keep the good times rolling. I’m going none are related.

DANIEL: Oh, nothing.

HEDVIG: I’m too because…

DANIEL: Okay. Okay.

BEN: I think PROPHET with an E is probably like we’re talking Abrahamic, Greek, something really fucking old there as a root. PROFIT is feeling French root to me.

HEDVIG: Though it’s really Latin.

BEN: The money you make after you break even. And PROFESSOR, I think there is a suffix… sorry, a prefix going on there like PROFESS, CONFESS, that sort of thing. So, I actually think there’s no prefix relation because both of the PRO[PHE|FI]TS aren’t a prefix and it is a prefix for professor, that’s my guess.

DANIEL: Okay, it’s time to vote, PROPHET, PROFESSOR and PROFIT. They’re all related, the PROs are related, but nothing else, and nothing is related, those votes are pouring in.

HEDVIG: Oh, it just occurred to me that yeah, that -FESSOR and -FIT both sound like going back to Latin words for MAKE and DO.

BEN: Oh, there we go.

DANIEL: That’s Latin facere.

HEDVIG: Yeah, but -PHET doesn’t… Ah, maybe it does. Maybe they’re all fully related. They might all be PRO and DO, but I voted nothing related because I think it’s a trap.

DANIEL: I voted the PROs are related, but nothing else. That’s my pick.

Alright, and now it’s time to see what everybody did. Okay, the biggest vote was for nothing related, 56%. The next most common, they’re all related, 25%. And the PROs are related, but nothing else, a rather meager 19%, which was a little bit worrying for me. Okay, the answer is the PROs are related, but nothing else.

BEN: Argh.

DANIEL: So, they all mean “forward”. A PROPHET is someone who speaks forward, sees what’s going to happen and that is Greek, phēnai, to speak. And we see that word… We’ve seen that word a lot of places. We should do a thing on phēnai.

PROFESSOR, that’s your -FESS. And that comes from to acknowledge or to speak. It’s past participle… It’s Latin, it’s fassus, to acknowledge or to confess.

And then, PROFIT is PRO-, forward and then to make or to do. Hedvig got it right, it was facere, to make or to do. There you have it. So, if you said the PROs are related but nothing else, you’re good.

Big thanks to everybody who keeps sending in our Related or Nots. Thanks to Sullivan, thanks to James and thanks to Arjun. And also, of course, thanks to Ste for that great jingle. If you would like to to gift us a Related or Not jingle, you know how to do it. Hit us up on the emails, hello@becauselanguage.com.

Okay, the moment is here. It’s time to talk about our Words of the Week of the Year. I gathered up all the words that we’ve done every episode and I’ve chucked them onto Bluesky, Discord, Facebook and Twitter, just for grins. People voted over the last week. We’ve got 487 votes across four platforms, which is about equal to last year. I do notice that Twitter input is down this year. From about steady 10.3%, it’s gone down to 6.3%, which means that our fans are not there.

Seeing the breakdown between the platforms was very fun because we got to see what words were very Bluesky and what words were very Twitter, etc. The very Bluesky words were RETVRN. A conservative far right movement wanting a return to the past where somehow, they’re magically the ones not having things horrible. Also, another favourite Bluesky word was BARK MITZVAH, a celebration for a dog when it turns 13. No, James, Grok did not vote. Very Twitter. There was nothing that was really Twitter because there was just a lack of data. So, I didn’t have anything good to say there. The very Facebook terms were a COZY CRIME, a genre of mystery, literature or entertainment, but with less dread than, say, horror or Scandi noir. Also, Facebook really liked the FORCING PARTY, [LAUGHS] a gathering where you get together with friends and force each other to do tasks that you’ve been blocking on. I love my forcing friends. Sometimes, I’ve just sat on Zoom with a friend in a distant country at a certain time and we don’t talk. We just do stuff, but just having that person’s presence. Hedvig, I think you refer to it as a LIFE MANAGEMENT PARTY.

HEDVIG: LIFE ADMIN PARTY, yeah, or something. Because forcing sounds…

DANIEL: No, I need to be forced on some things. I’m never going to get to those emails unless somebody’s looking at me.

HEDVIG: Fair enough.

DANIEL: Otherwise, I’ll just go play Gisnep. The very Discord ones were BEAN SOUP THEORY, regarding the idea that somehow you stumble into, you just can’t leave it alone. You just have to comment on it, even though it’s tangential to your normal interests. And AUDIENCE CAPTURE, Discord liked audience capture, a dynamic in which a public figure feels a need to act in unacceptable ways to fulfill audience expectations. All right.

BEN: Ah, the Joe Rogan effect.

HEDVIG: Yeah, Russell Brand as well. Yeah.

DANIEL: Yes, you can do a Russell rebrand. Okay, let’s talk about an honorable mention that didn’t make the cut. And that was UNDERBUS. Keith via email and Aaron, The Side of Facts, both pointed this one out. Can I just say that I hate knowing what a DOUBLE TAP is in warfare terms?

HEDVIG: Oh, shit. I know what that is.

BEN: How is DOUBLE TAP related to UNDERBUS?

DANIEL: Because when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the US apparently ordered a second strike on a boat that was already disabled. You’re not supposed to do that. You’re not supposed to kill them with a second strike and that’s what was ordered by someone. And so then, Hegseth tried to say, “Well, no, I didn’t do it. It was actually this other person,” whose name I haven’t got right now. So, they threw him under the bus. Trying to throw somebody under the bus is a good old underbussing move. And it’s exactly what happens when the shit goes down. Didn’t make it though. We threw it in.

Let’s talk about our number 10. There was a tie for number 10. There’s a lot of ties for this one. One of them was ELBOWS UP, suggested by Mr Bobby Hunt. A self-protective but not entirely legal move in hockey, but in this case, an exhortation for Canadians to be prepared to defend against American aggression. [BEN LAUGHS]

HEDVIG: I saw Gretchen McCulloch also write about this one on Bluesky. She’s a Canadian of Lingthusiasm podcasts and saying that she thought that would win over MAPLEWASH for the Word Of the Year in Canada, and ELBOWS UP. By the way, ice hockey in general has a lot of gray area when it comes to like what you can do. I’ve been reading about fighting and stuff. And it’s like there are certain times when you can just box someone in the face.

BEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: It’s norms. It’s all norms.

HEDVIG: Without a lot of consequences.

DANIEL: Yep. The other 10th place word was INNIE. Your at-work persona, who has to work so your OUTIE can enjoy the rest of your life. Inspired by the TV series, Severance, which we’ve talked about a number of times. Fascinating concept and we’re wondering how to negotiate our outer lives and our inner lives. How do we get that work-life balance? I think this is a theme that we’re…

BEN: I reckon TV show words now have far less staying power because we have to wait so long between drinks on shows. Like, you can go for two or more years between seasons of a show coming out. And so, that cycle means that things just drop completely out of the zeitgeist a little bit. So, for instance, when you said INNIE, I was like, “What’s that?” And then, you’re like, “Oh, the word…” I was like, “Oh, yeah, Severance is a thing.”

DANIEL: Severance, ah, gee.

BEN: Yeah. That’s right.

DANIEL: It was pretty huge this year with season 2 coming out and a third season one day.

BEN: Yeah, eventually, when I’m a wizened crone in my cabin in the woods.

HEDVIG: This has also spawned a lot of industry around recaps because when it takes two years for the next season to come out, people have forgotten what happened last time. This is, for example, I think a problem with Stranger Things. And so, there’s a lot of, like, YouTubers and stuff that be like, “Season 5 is coming out. Here’s the reminders of what happened in previous seasons.” And I think I heard on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, which is like entertainment showbiz podcast, they talked about… I think it was Amazon trying to launch generative AI video recaps for users because they know that this is happening and they want to see… So, they take all the shot footage from previous seasons and then the thing tries to make a decent recap.

DANIEL: That is an interesting task because a playback thing, you’ve got to hit the information that needs to happen, but it also has to be interesting to watch and coherent.

BEN: I just love… because that job, by the way, in the industry, I say with a little bit of knowledge, would have been the drudge work of an up-and-coming editor or something like that, right? Like, that’s the kind of work you do when you’re trying to crack into the industry. So, it’s actually probably just the very, very cheapest labour they could have possibly engaged in. [LAUGHS]

HEDVIG: Yeah.

BEN: And they’re still just like, “No, let’s cut that corner.”

DANIEL: [LAUGHS] Okay, let’s move on to number seven. There was a three-way tie.

BEN: Ooh.

DANIEL: Number seven suggested by Brendan, ATTENTION ECONOMY. This refers to the way that our time and our attention is scarce. So, if you can command attention, it’s a source of power. For example, in a campaign, if you can get a lot of attention, that’s money you don’t have to spend because the media is covering you.

I was listening to a bit of a podca… the Jon Stewart podcast with Jon Favreau and Tim Miller, and they were talking about… the phrase they kept using was INCENTIVE STRUCTURE. The incentive structure is all messed up. We get shown things or things stick. Things become sticky not because they’re true or not because they’re inspiring, but because they garner attention and this encourages more attention-getting behaviour which annoys everyone, but which works. People are being rewarded for entirely the wrong things.

BEN: I’m trying to think of a thing I would hate more than this being my job to do that. To figure out… To sit in rooms and talk about what I believe and argue about what I think is going to be the stickiest, most engaging thing. I genuinely think that would make me horrendously depressed to just think about that all the time. It would be awful. I can’t believe people can do it. It’s wild to me.

HEDVIG: There are so many people who love to do that. People who are in marketing and other things.

BEN: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Like, that stuff just breaks me!

HEDVIG: Nothing they love more than like mass manipulation. I find it fascinating, mass group psychology, but I would struggle to be doing that, especially if it was about something important like who you elect in a political position. If it’s like you’re spawning new ways of selling dishwasher liquid, I can have fun in that space. [CHUCKLES] Like, that can be a fun time to think of a silly little skit that people can do in an ad, but yeah, in spaces like this.

BEN: And just remember, everyone, dishwasher powder is the way forward, the loose stuff. Get rid of the tablets.

DANIEL: Interesting. I keep thinking about how this relates to our show and how we choose and how our listeners bring us ideas and then we sort of talk about them and I choose a few, but I’m not trying to make it sticky, I’m just trying to make it interesting to me and to us.

BEN: Daniel, if we were better at this, this show would be much, much bigger than it is.

DANIEL: I know. I know.

BEN: Like, our humble little group is entirely born out of the fact that none of us want to be that person.

DANIEL: And you know what? Life well spent.

BEN: Yeah, yeah, 100%. So, that was one of the sevens. What are the other two sevens?

DANIEL: Number seven, TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE. A humorous way of referring to a strange event as though it’s a known holiday. Here are some that I picked up from Bluesky, but please don’t google this yourself unless your safe-for-work settings are on. Happy Caturday to all who celebrate. Happy Stylish But Illegal Monkey in IKEA day to all who celebrate. Does anybody remember that strange… the monkey in a coat?

BEN: I don’t. No.

DANIEL: Achieved meme status? [LAUGHS] Come on! If you remember…

HEDVIG: Vaguely.

DANIEL: If you remember, put a monkey in chat. Oh, my gosh. So, it’s a funny sort of way of saying… Actually, it goes back to our construction thing. When people pick up a thing like… what was it? “Salma Hayek’s owl coughed a dead rat on Harry Styles” day to those who celebrate. And then, suggested by Kitty via email, CLANKER. Derogatory term for a computer robot or source of AI. Commonly a slur for a robot, but now extended to AI. So, there’s your… I’m getting a theme here. There’s some interesting things going on. Some interesting societal commentary that are popping up.

HEDVIG: Yeah, there’s workplace culture, AI SLOP, and PARASOCIAL, like that class of things.

DANIEL: Thank you, James, for sticking the monkey in chat.

BEN: [CHUCKLES] He’s so cute.

DANIEL: There you go.

BEN: If I would have to guess, I would guess that is a Japanese snow macaque, the only primate that lives in snowy climates.

DANIEL: Mmm, it is. And its name is Darwin. Let’s go to number five: SLOPPER. A slopper is somebody who uses generative AI irresponsibly or inappropriately often. See also, SECOND-HAND THINKER.

BEN: Love it. Love SLOPPER. I need a good slur. I love a good slur.

DANIEL: Obviously, we don’t like real slurs but this is… [LAUGHS]

BEN: No, no, clearly. But it’s great when there’s a slur that’s completely removed from any wink-wink. I reckon CLANKER is more gross and yucky than SLOPPER is.

DANIEL: Interesting. [LAUGHS] Okay, okay.

HEDVIG: And we haven’t brought up TOASTER yet, but that’s another CLANKER synonym, right? From… um… Battlestar Galactica.

DANIEL: Oh, yeah. I think I ran across that.

BEN: That’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that.

DANIEL: Mm. If we want to discourage generative AI, and I feel like a lot of us do, we need to do with it what we did with smoking in the 1990s. And that is just make it seem super uncool or irresponsible or gross. And so, a term like SLOPPER can do that.

HEDVIG: Didn’t Business Insider write an article earlier this year about that? Like, consumers will negatively rate things if they have an AI feature and stuff like that, and they’re still putting them on everything. So, I don’t [CHUCKLES] know what’s happening.

BEN: My guess there is that everyone, and by everyone, I mean the big players, still haven’t actually really figured out how to monetise this yet. So, they are throwing everything at the wall and desperately hoping that something somewhere sticks. And they go, “Aha. This is…” Because from Google’s perspective, they figured out AdWords or whatever it was. “We can make money from clicking on the thing.” And they were like, “Oh, thank fuck.” Because they were doing this thing that was really expensive and there was no way to monetise it.” And so, I think that’s what everyone in AI is doing, is they’re just desperately hoping and praying an AdWords will come along and save them from what would otherwise be a monstrously expensive but fundamentally unprofitable enterprise.

DANIEL: Well, as we know, as we talked to Dr Emily Bender and Dr Alex Hanna about how the history of natural language processing has been fits and starts. It’s the history of booms and busts. And so, we’ve had a boom, let’s see what happens next. On a related note, number five, THAT’S AI. A way of saying, “I don’t believe you.”

BEN: Yeah. Yeah, that’s cute. I think it’s a flash in the pan, but it is cute.

DANIEL: That’s AI.

BEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Well, it’s a necessary sort of skepticism, and I think we just… I have this idea that what we’re going through is not really that much different from what we’ve already been going through. There has always been disinformation. There has always been people in a fantasy sort of land. There has always been… like, a hundred years ago, people were saying, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” You know what I mean? So, I feel like it’s just happening faster and more voluminously, but the same thing.

HEDVIG: It’s the acceleration of it, that’s really scary. There was always people who were very prone to, for example, psychosis, but having a sycophantic thing you can talk to that says that, “Yes, you have discovered the truth about the universe.”

BEN: I can’t remember if I’ve said it on the show before. I probably have, because I have very few talking points and I recycle most of them. But…

HEDVIG: Yeah.

BEN: [LAUGHS] …the thing I keep coming back to is how burned by autonomous vehicles I was. I don’t know if you were paying attention, Hedvig in, like… we’re talking like over 10 years ago now, probably closer to like 15 years ago. But the dominant wisdom was that you and I would never fucking drive a car again, basically. Like, I don’t know if you guys remember, but when that stuff was first coming out…

And we’re talking pre-Tesla being a company, we’re talking the early days. I remember reading truly breathless think pieces about how the entire transport industry is going to be out of work, and that’s like 30% of employment and all this sort of stuff. And it just promptly fucking has not happened in even the slightest of ways. Like, Daniel is an investor in Tesla and he owns a Tesla and stuff, but truly autonomous driving is not here, has not been here. It has not revolutionised transport.

Daniel, you can say, Okay, cool, my car can stop and stuff, but show me trucking without drivers, and I will say that transport has been replaced. It hasn’t. it categorically hasn’t. I have to get in a fucking car all the goddamn time, and I hate it. I wanted there to be a transport revolution and it didn’t come. So, I’m hearing and I am seeing all the same breathlessness about AI that we saw about autonomous vehicles. And then, society just promptly was like, “Mm. Nah.”

DANIEL: I have thoughts but go ahead, Hedvig.

HEDVIG: [CHUCKLES] I also have thoughts. There are some cases where people have implemented autonomous driving. For example, in some cities in China they have taxis that are driverless that sort of ish work for some people. But I know what you mean with like, “It’s happening next year,” and it never keeps happening, like, it’s coming, it’s coming.

For me, it’s not autonomous cars, it’s male contraception. Like, every couple of years, there’s a new story about a new gel, a new pill, something as reversible kinds of reproductive contraception for men and it just never really materialises. It’s never there and it just keeps on… And that one has, as far as I know… Self-driving cars is making more progress than that.

BEN: And, Daniel, I will allow you to riposte in one second. I want to just finally clarify, what I mean is AI is here, the technology exists. Self-driving cars, technology exists. It’s here. I’m not arguing that the technology is not sufficient to the task. We as a society have just been like, “No, thank you.”

HEDVIG: That’s true.

DANIEL: Well, the thing about, in my experience, autonomous vehicles is that it happens slowly and then it happens quickly. So, as you mentioned, I drive a Tesla and I am currently subscribed to full self-driving. It’s version 13.2.9. 14 is the version in the States which people say is really magical. I have had to intervene occasionally, but I have not been driving myself for two months. I have been letting the car take me everywhere.

BEN: But that’s been true for a long time, Daniel. Like, as in… This is what I mean. We’ve had this for a while.

DANIEL: But it’s getting really good now. Like, I haven’t had to intervene a lot. I am ready to intervene. I am being in it… It’s a different form of driving. We went out once and I showed you autosteer and that was just like lane keeping and stuff like that. But this, it’s making decisions. It’s stopping for… it’s appropriately cautious around people and road debris. It’s getting better and better.

BEN: So, your argument is essentially that we are all the guy in the elevator when elevators first became a thing and we were uncomfortable in elevators and we needed a little man, because it was a man usually, to like press the button for us or whatever. So, we need to let go of whatever lingering fears that we have.

DANIEL: Well, it’s as you said. It’s happening.

BEN: I just…

DANIEL: It’s happening. And that’s a good thing.

BEN: It’s been happening for 15 years. This is where I think I agree with Hedvig.

DANIEL: It’s been happening for 15 years, and it is still happening. We’ll go for a ride. We’ll go for a ride.

BEN: Mm.

HEDVIG: You know, it’s funny, we have so many items in this that are ethically complicated. So, like, Daniel has stock in Tesla and has self-driving cars. I sometimes use large language models to help me with coding. We all know that society does not approve of these behaviours. I want to know which ones Ben is?

BEN: I use generative AI from time to time. I’m not an AI vegan. I use it when there’s drudgeware. And I want to be clear, I’m not actually against self-driving cars. I am for self-driving cars. The most incredibly safe thing we could do is to get humans out of the control of vehicles for sure, for sure. What I am really suspicious of is… and this is as a person who has spent his life adoring speculative fiction and all this kind of stuff, is the breathlessness and the histrionics that seem to come with the prognostications of, “The future’s here.” And I’m like, “It’s not,” because we’re still humans and we’re still fucking dumb and we’re going to keep doing dumb fucking human things. The reason self-driving cars largely aren’t here is because we collectively have been like, “Nah.”

DANIEL: No, there’s a different reason. The different reason is called the BITTER LESSON. This should be a Word of the Year. And we’ll go on to the next thing. The bitter lesson is that we learned — and we learned this in natural language processing as well — we tried to get smarter methods and that didn’t do anything. What did it was more data. But you can’t collect more data unless you have a fleet of cars driving around constantly. The data is expensive. The data is messy. The only people that can do it at scale are the people that own a car company where they’re watching, with consent, everybody’s driving and just logging hours and hours and hours of driving.

BEN: We’ll see.

DANIEL: We’ll see. Number four, BAIT, combined with other words, RAGE BAIT, ENGAGEMENT BAIT, CLICKBAIT indicating an enticement. James on the Discord said, “Was reminded this morning by Golden Globe announcements of an older use of bait. OSCAR-BAIT apparently goes back to at least 1968.” That’s a nice catch, James.

BEN: Yeah. That’s a classic one.

DANIEL: And said, then there’s the horribly sexist term, JAIL BAIT. Yeah, that’s not great.

BEN: Yeah, gross.

DANIEL: But those other terms, I really like bait as a way of suggesting… Ooh, and then, James has also said QUEER-BAITING, as well. Yeah, sometimes it has some less worthy uses. Closely related to FARMING, I’ve noticed. BAITING and FARMING.

BEN: Ah, okay. Yeah, well, because it’s essentially the same process of a different nature, right? So, when you farm, you cultivate, but when you bait, you trap… But it’s like, I will go out and get the protein from the trapping, and you cultivate the vegetables or whatever.

DANIEL: Mm. And together, we shall make a meal.

HEDVIG: I think that one of the reasons people find these kinds of behaviours upsetting is because we want people to be authentic, and we feel like different kinds of baiting and farming are ways of doing something in a public space where you’re misrepresenting yourself. You’re not being authentic. Queer-baiting is one of them. Rage-bait is another. You’re kind of intentionally tricking people or something. But also, I think it’s healthy to not be your full self in a public space. Like, there should be intimate spaces.

BEN: I think baiting in particular though, I think carries a heavier negative valence than farming, right? Because to trap is like an active thing, and to be trapped feels worse, I think, than to just simply see something and go, “Oh, I like that thing.” When I have fallen for something that is bait… because it happens to all of us, right? Like, I’ll be on TikTok and I’ll see something, and I’ll show it to my partner, and she’s like, “Mm. Sorry, bro, that’s AI,” or whatever. I feel like there’s a thing inside me where I was like, “No, I was supposed to be better than this.”

DANIEL: I just assume everything’s a skit. Everything’s a skit.

BEN: Everything’s a bit. But that makes me sad as well, Daniel. I don’t want to be in a world where everything’s a bit and everything’s a skit. I do seek a little bit of realness and authenticity. I fully agree with Hedvig’s point that you don’t want everyone’s full self in a public discourse. That would be fucking unbearable, but some measure of truth would be a little bit nice.

DANIEL: Just tell me something true. Just give me something true.

BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, Daniel, keep going.

DANIEL: Number three, IF NOT X, WHY X-SHAPED? Humorous phrasal template after the Reddit meme where there’s inexplicably a bear cruising around with all these dogs. And one could imagine a dog saying, “But if that’s not a friend, why is it friend-shaped?” And it’s been used for other things. We mentioned Elon’s Nazi salute, “If not Nazi, why Nazi-shaped?” And there were other phrasal templates, but that was the one I focused on and I think they more would have been popular if I had included more of them.

Let’s go on to number two, this was a delightful one. This was suggested by Liz: PEBBLING.

BEN: Oh, yes.

DANIEL: Yay.

BEN: Yeah, pebbling is lovely.

DANIEL: Pebbling is where you send a small…

BEN: The penguins.

DANIEL: …post a meme or an image to a friend as a low-effort way of maintaining the relationship in the manner of penguins.

BEN: That’s very sweet. I saw a great… I don’t use Instagram at all, not because I have a strong ethical position, but just because there’s nothing there that appeals to me. And I saw someone say the difference between an Instagram reels user and a TikTok user is a TikTok user will send you something that they think you will like and an Instagram reels user will send you something they like. And I thought that was a really nice way to insult people. [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: Oh, that’s very good. [CHUCKLES]

HEDVIG: Ah, I’m not sure that doesn’t…

BEN: It’s probably not true, but I just thought that was cute.

HEDVIG: It’s just: Instagram reel people will send you something that you will like, but you already saw it two months ago.

BEN: Ah, zing. Zing!

DANIEL: [LAUGHS] Nice one, Hedvig. I feel like this one isn’t as momentous or as zeitgeisty as the others, but I feel like it’s the word we need.

BEN: Yeah, [LAUGHS] it’s falsely high in the order because we all desperately want something cute and nice in our lives.

DANIEL: If you have a friend that you should pebble, then pebble them today. All right, it’s time for the big one, the winner. Oh, I was surprised by this one. I wasn’t expecting it to do this well. TEMU (derogatory). It’s the Because Language Word of the Year as voted by our listeners. A cheap or knock-off version. For example, Australian right-wing former politician, Peter Dutton, tried to be Temu Trump and suffered mightily. Also, it’s popping up by itself, like, “That’s a bit Temu.” What do you think?

HEDVIG: I like it. It’s like the meme, “We have Donald Trump at home. Donald Trump.” It’s fun.

BEN: Yeah, yeah. I was a bit surprised because I live in a world where Temu isn’t much of a thing. And when I say I live in a world, my immediate sort of circles, it’s not something that really comes up very often. I don’t know a lot of people who are buying stuff from Temu or anything like that. So, I think this placing as highly as it does speaks to the fact that there is quite a lot more engagement with Temu than I’ve possibly realised and anticipated. I like it. This has replaced Home Brand or Black & Gold for me. So that’s a very Australian pair of things.

DANIEL: Generic.

BEN: Yeah, generic brands exactly that exist in Australia. Yeah, it’s fun. I like it.

DANIEL: There was an interesting article that I ran into about how Temu. It’s called, “Temu is evil, but I still use it: Platform cynicism in platform capitalism,” by Shuxian Liu and a team in New Media & Society. I’ll drop a link in the chat if anybody wants to check it out. It’s the idea that we know that things are sometimes kind of bad, but also, we still use them and we reason with ourselves that, “Well, everything’s kind of bad.” And you can think of that one problematic fave thing that you use and yet you say, “Mm, I probably should use less of this.”

HEDVIG: Yeah, I like to make my own little jewelry things at home and the local shops where I live don’t have the things I want and they exist on AliExpress.

DANIEL: That’s where they are.

BEN: I am guilty of buying knock-off Game Boy cartridges from China on AliExpress.

HEDVIG: Oh.

DANIEL: There’s a long history of using brand names as some kind of questionable thing, like a Mickey Mouse operation, because the merchandise…

BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: The Mickey Mouse tie-ins were really bad for a long time. Except in Australia where if you say that something is “Mickey Mouse,” that means it’s really good. Rhyming slang: it’s GROUSE. It’s really good. Yeah, there you go. But don’t forget also our episode with Abduweli Ayup, the Uyghur language advocate who was imprisoned by the Chinese government, who pointed out that they have questionable labour practices like forced labour, modern-day slavery of marginalised people, and so on.

So, Hedvig, I think you’re right. I think themes that we had this time were stuff like AI skepticism, really shining a torch onto social change, and the social things that are happening. We did a lot of calling out the game in our Words of the Year this year.

HEDVIG: Mmm. Yeah, a lot of the baits and washing and… yeah.

BEN: The quiet part out loud.

HEDVIG: Quiet part out loud.

DANIEL: So, TEMU (derogatory), the Because Language Word of the Year for 2025, for all who celebrate.

Shall we go on to comments? Let’s go on to one by Vitor via email, who commented on our discussion of the yes-having languages, the no-having languages. There are some languages and their names just mean something like, “Oh, yeah, they’re the ones that say this thing for yes or this thing for no.” And then, we found there was languages, the what-having languages, they say, “This thing for what, so we’re going to call them that.”

Vitor says, “Hi folks, longtime listener, first-time caller here. I’ve been a patron for maybe a year now, but I’ve been listening to you since Talk the Talk times. And I knew Hedvig from before that from her guest appearances in Language Made Difficult.” Are those still available, Hedvig, by the way? Are they out there somewhere? Well…

HEDVIG: I don’t know.

DANIEL: I don’t think I’ve ever… I’ve heard you on radio stuff, but I don’t think I’ve heard you on that one anyway, googling. Says Vitor, “On the topic of languages named after a distinctive word, I’d like to add to the list, Guugu Yimithirr, which is… it’s an Australian language. It’s named after the word for this.

BEN: Oh, a this-having language.

DANIEL: “I love the show. You folks are great.” So, I looked that up and the word Guugu means speech or language. Yimithirr, the Yimi means THIS. It’s the indicator for this thing. It’s the this-having language. And then, I did a little bit of work. This is why I took so long on this episode. I looked for other this-having languages in the area, and it was hard to say. I looked at the AIATSIS reference guide. It lists some languages that are tempting but they’re just actually variations on Guugu Yimithirr like Kuku-warra. There are some that are like that. Kuku-warra just means its language and it’s strange or unintelligible, which is the typical thing that you do to the people across the river from you. Thank you, Vitor.

Also, last one, GUERNSEY from Dermott on Patreon who says… we talked about GUERNSEY and JERSEY. We had that in our Related or Not last episode. And they’re names for sweaters because they made them. Dermott says, “I have never heard a football shirt being called a GUERNSEY and it must be an Aussie thing. However, I was sure there must be an Irish link. Especially given the number of Irish in Australia, historically, getting a guernsey in Australia means you got a post, you managed to get a jumper for the team, you made the team.”

“And when you mentioned the special woven knit to identify drowned sailors, I know the same thing is traditionally done on the Aran Islands off Ireland’s West Coast. A majority Irish-speaking area, they would refer to their woolen jumpers as GANSEY in Irish and that was where I thought the term came from. Sorry for the ramble, but I enjoyed my etymological rabbit hole, whether or not it was accurate.” Thanks, Dermott.

BEN: I loved your ramble too.

DANIEL: I did too. I wasn’t sure what’s going on though. I mean, Irish speakers appear to have borrowed this word from Guernsey, so there’s a neat little link there. But I wonder, did the Australians borrow it from the Irish who were there or was it a British English thing or was there some sort of mixture? It was really hard to tell, but I did enjoy seeing about that link.

Just a big thank you to everybody who gave stories, words and comments, especially on this episode, but throughout the whole year. Thanks to SpeechDocs.

I’d like to give a big shoutout to all of our guests for this year. Carmen Fought, Michael Erard, Gabe Henry, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. Paulette van der Voort and Solveig Bosse, Lauren Gawne, Adele Goldberg, Stephen Levinson, couple amazing episodes there. Karen Yin of the Conscious Style Guide, Adam Aleksic, who’s also known as Etymology Nerd, Martha Barnette, Maia Chao, Natan Last, Madeleine Beekman, Séan Roberts, Cole Robertson, and Anne-Marie Verkerk. And of course, our continual co-hosts, Caitlin Green and Kelly Wright. We hope you’re doing well and we want to see more of you in the next year.

Thanks also to you great patrons. We’re going to be back next year with more words, news, interviews, Related or Nots. And we will definitely figure out this thing called a language. Take it, Hedvig.

HEDVIG: Beautiful. Sorry, I was busy googling because I didn’t remember that I had been on the radio show that they said I had and I don’t think I have. I’ve been on a different radio show.

DANIEL: Oh, okay.

HEDVIG: But I had a moment of, like, “Am I losing my memory?”

DANIEL: Have I done so much media?

HEDVIG: Yeah, no, I haven’t done that much media, but I’ve done two other Australian radio show segments before. I’m very sorry, Daniel.

DANIEL: Find them and we’ll slap ’em up.

HEDVIG: If you would like to help Because Language reach a wider audience and have more people exposed to my husband’s jingles and our Related or Not segments and other things, you can follow us in all the places. The more followers we have, the more spread we have on those places and that’s fun. But also, you get to see posts we make and you can vote in Words of the Week of the Year among other things.

So, you can follow us. We are @becauselanguage.com on Bluesky and @becauselangpod just about everywhere else including, I believe we still have the Facebook profile up. If you’re a Facebooker, that works. Twitter profile is still active but maybe don’t expect too much on there, but it does still exist. You can also send us ideas, for example, Related or Not items, or news items. We really enjoy having those from listeners and if you want to do that, you can email us at hello@becauselanguage.com or you can go to our website, becauselanguage.com, and look at the symbol for SpeakPipe where you can send a little audio message and then we can play your lovely, lovely voice.

Another way of supporting the show is to tell a friend about us. If you like us, if there’s a special episode you like that you think is really good, I tend to send linguists the episodes about generativism because that’s something that linguists tend to think is fun. [LAUGHS] I send other people other types of episodes, but I can really recommend sending, like, a specific episode that you really enjoy or that you think really that person would enjoy.

DANIEL: Another way to help us is to become a patron. You get stuff depending on your level, there’s live shows, mailouts, shoutouts, bonus episodes, Discord access. We love it because it helps us to pay the bills. It helps us to put a lot of effort in that we couldn’t normally do and it makes the show, the regular episodes, free for everybody and the bonus episodes free eventually.

I want to give a special shoutout to our patrons at the Supporter level and this time I just threw all the names into a random number generator at random.org.

BEN: [LAUGHS] We’ve hit it. We’ve hit the bottom, folks. We are at the end. The well is dry!

DANIEL: Because I ran out of time. But random.org also knows how good of a person you are so you can decide where you fit on this list. It might go from bottom to top or top to bottom.

BEN: Is it an ascending or a descending list?

IDANIEL: ‘m not even sure. Here’s our supporters Faux Frenchie, John M, Kevin, Elías, Rach, Steele.

IN UNISON: LordMortis.

DANIEL: Larry, Sydney, Ayesha, Amy, Aldo, Chris L, Sonic Snejhog, Andy from Logophilius, Canny Archer, Rachel. Everybody.

IN UNISON: O Tim.

DANIEL: Wolfdog, Amir, Helen, Lyssa, Manú, Felicity, Nasrin, Nikoli, Meredith, Rodger, gramaryen, Stan, Molly Dee, John K, Lucy, Colleen, Tadhg, Laura, Kristofer, Joanna, Iztin, Kathy, sæ̃m, Andy B.

DANIEL and BEN: Linguistic C̷̛̤̰̳͉̺͕̋̚̚͠h̸͈̪̤͇̥͛͂a̶̡̢̛͕̰͈͗͋̐̚o̷̟̹͈̞̔̊͆͑͒̃s̵̍̒̊̈́̚̚ͅ.

DANIEL: J0HNTR0Y, Diego, Rene, James, Keith, a lot of you aren’t there. PharaohKatt, Tony, Amanita, Luis. New this time, supporter, Xekri, Nigel, Ignacio, Fiona, Mignon, Ariaflame, and Martha.

And thanks to our latest patrons at the friend level, Alessandra, who bumped up from free. Love it when people do that, even for a little while. And our newest free patrons, M. M., Robin, Emily J, Evie, Troy, M Jason, Shyamlee, Mercury Starlight, and Lanae. Thank you to all of our patrons.

BEN: Our theme music was written and performed by Drew Krapja…. Oh, no, I haven’t done that last bit in ages! [LAUGHTER]

DANIEL: Ol’ One-Take Ainslie.

BEN: Our theme music was written and performed by Drew Krapljanov who also performs with Ryan Beno and Didion’s Bible. Thanks for listening. We will catch you next time. Because Language.

IN UNISON: Pew, pew, pew.

DANIEL: Thanks for being here. This was great. Okay, I’m going to shut down the recording.

BEN: [IN A SINGSONG VOICE] I’ve got to go to the beach now, because it’s…

[BOOP]

DANIEL: How did I go from 10 to 7? Hang on. Am I…? Something off with…

BEN: Because there’s ties. That’s how ties work. They eliminate numbers.

DANIEL: I get the…

BEN: Because there was a tie for 10, wasn’t there?

DANIEL: There was a tie for… Hang on, I’m just going to make sure because it only takes a second to check. Yep, but then it should be… they should be 8.

BEN: Yeah, but don’t you have more ties coming up?

DANIEL: 8, 8, 8. You know what? I’m going to fix it in post. [LAUGHS]

BEN: The math of this, by the way, always spins me out. I always get caught out by this at school when there’s a competition between the various factions or whatever. And they’re like, “And tied in, like, fifth is duh-duh-duh.” And then, they’re like, “Which makes first place,” and my brain is like, “Whoa, hang on.”

DANIEL: Oh, okay.

BEN: What did we lose?

DANIEL: So, ELBOWS UP and/or INNIE, one of them has to be 11. And then, there’s a 10 and then there’s a 7, 7, 7. Okay, we’re good. Phew. Okay, mathematically, we’re sound.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]