“Rizz” has been named Word of the Year for 2023 by Oxford University Press.
According to the dictionary publisher, the viral term is a“colloquial noun, defined as ‘style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.”
It is believed to have originated from the word ‘charisma’, of which the middle part of the word is taken.
“Rizz” emerged top among eight shortlisted words deemed to represent the most used expression in 2023, Oxford shared in their announcement on Monday.
“This year, we created a shortlist of eight words, all chosen to reflect the mood, ethos, or preoccupations of the past year, and put them to the public to vote for their favourites. Through head-to-head competitions over a four-day voting period, the public narrowed down our shortlist of worthy contenders to four finalists: rizz, Swiftie, prompt, and situationship.“
The contending finalists were then put through a final stage of scrutiny by experts to decide on the top word.
“These words were then put to our language experts, who considered our corpus data, the vote counts, and the public commentary around the words to choose the definitive word of the year for 2023.“
Commenting about this year’s winner, President of Oxford Languages, Casper Grathwohl, said, “Rizz is a term that has boomed on social media and speaks to how language that enjoys intense popularity and currency within particular social communities—and even in some cases lose their popularity and become passé—can bleed into the mainstream. This is a story as old as language itself, but stories of linguistic evolution and expansion that used to take years can now take weeks or months. The spike in usage data for rizz goes to prove that words and phrases that evolve from internet culture are increasingly becoming part of day-to-day vernacular and will continue to shape language trends in the future.”
Last year, “Goblin Mode” was adjudged World Of The Year for 2022. The term is described as “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
