Word of the year for 2023 is âhallucinate:â Hereâs why
Artificial intelligence has impacted just about everything in 2023. The word of the year is no exception.
Dictionary.com announced its word of the year was “hallucinate,” but in the AI sense, not the traditional meaning. According to Dictionary.com, the definition of “hallucinate” for this way is “to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.”
“The stories, language, wonder, and worry surrounding AI and its many implications were inescapable this year,” Grant Barrett, head of lexicography at Dictionary.com said in a statement. “Hallucinate as our 2023 Word of the Year encapsulates technology’s continuing impact on social change, and the continued discrepancy between the perfect future we envision and the messy one we actually achieve.”
The word, newly added to the dictionary this year, was selected based on the site’s search data, language trends and major cultural themes of the year.
In 2023, dictionary lookups for hallucinate increased 46% over 2022, alongside a comparable increase in the noun form hallucination. At the same time, a search of publications showed the use of the word was up 85% year-over-year.
Other candidates for word of the year include strike, wokeism, indicted, wildfire, and rizz, the year’s most durable—and, on Dictionary.com, most-searched—slang term. In case you’re wondering, rizz, according to Dictionary.com, “means attractiveness, charm, or skill in flirtation that allows one to easily attract romantic or sexual partners.”