Citing popular youth political movements around the world, Oxford Dictionaries declared 2017 the year of the youthquake. Antifa, broflake and milkshake duck were just a few of the other shortlisted choices.
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Oxford Dictionaries announced on Friday that "youthquake" was the Word of the Year for 2017. The publisher chose this now as "not only reflective of the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of this past year, but as having lasting potential as a word of cultural significance."
Youthquake, originally coined in 1965 by then-editor of Vogue Diana Vreeland, is defined as "a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people."
Vreeland was referencing how the baby boomers began to break away from the conformist values embraced by their parents throughout the 1950s.
According to Oxford's lexicographers, the word experienced a fivefold increase in usage from 2016 to 2017.
"Sometimes a Word of the Year is selected in recognition of its arrival, but other times it is a word that has been knocking at the proverbial door and waiting to be ushered in," Oxford said.
Citing the "unexpected insurgence of young voters" in Britain's June 2017 elections, as well as similar movements that saw 30-something leaders elected in New Zealand and France, Oxford wrote that youthquake is "firmly on its way to become a fixture of political discourse."
Broflake is a co-opted form of the term snowflake, used by the alt-right to malign progressives – but turned around to mock men on the far-right who are "readily upset or offended by progressive attitudes that conflict with his more conventional or conservative views."
Milkshake duck refers to a popular internet phenomenon that is "soon revealed to have a distasteful or repugnant past," such as Ken Bone, a man who rose to popularity in the US for his sweet, normal demeanor during the tempestuous US presidential debates in 2016. Shortly after becoming America's sweetheart, users on Reddit discovered controversial posts about women and insurance fraud that soon saw Bone castigated on social media.
Another word on the shortlist that highlighted the role young people are playing on the world stage was Antifa, the name of a loose-knit far-left collective that emerged first in Germany in the aftermath of World War II. The group achieved renewed notice in 2017 for its opposition to the G20 summit in Hamburg and to the administration of US President Donald Trump and the white nationalists encouraged by the Trump presidency.
From 'Ampel-Aus' to 'Flüchtlinge': Germany's 10 past words of the year
"Ampel-Aus" or "traffic light shutdown," referencing Germany's coalition collapse, is the 2024 word of the year. A look at the political buzzwords selected by the Association for the German Language over the last decade.
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2024: 'Ampel-Aus'
Germany's three-party coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP — parties represented respectively by the colors red, green and yellow — is known as the "traffic light coalition." The coalition breakdown in November 2024 went down in history as "Ampel-Aus," or "traffic light shutdown." It was selected by the Association for the German Language as the political buzzword of the year.
Wars, inflation, the climate emergency: There are many issues to worry about. "The crisis mode is a permanent state," said one German politician in a 2023 debate on how the COVID pandemic was managed. "Krisenmodus," or "crisis mode" was the Association for the German Language's selection that year.
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2022: 'Zeitenwende'
"Zeitenwende," literally "times-turn," refers to a historic turning point: The term was used by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a parliamentary address held in reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With its WWII history, Germany's postwar defense policy had been rather cautious, but in this geopolitical context, the country would need to significantly increase its military budget.
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2021: 'Wellenbrecher'
A plausible choice in times of an ongoing pandemic, "Wellenbrecher" (literally wave breaker) is a term that comes from coastal protection — it means breakwater. It also stands for all the measures that were taken to break the fourth COVID-19 wave that year, said the German Language Association, which has been selecting Germany's word of the year since 1977.
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2020: 'Corona-Pandemie'
The COVID-19 pandemic was, of course, the leading topic of the year 2020, and that's why the German word of the year was none other than "Corona-Pandemie" (corona pandemic). The runner-up word selected by the jury was also related to the pandemic: "Lockdown."
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2019: 'Respektrente'
Planned changes in German pension laws in 2019 were set to put many workers at a disadvantage by retirement ("Rente"), so the bill was disparagingly dubbed "Respektrente." The term won over expressions "Rollerchaos," referring to the chaos created by the sudden invasion of electric scooters in German cities, and "Fridays for Future," the English name for a worldwide school climate strike movement.
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2018: 'Heisszeit'
The term "Heisszeit," or warm age — as opposed to an "ice age," which sounds quite similar in German, "Eiszeit" — was chosen as the word of the year in 2018, reflecting not only Germany's extreme summer that year, but climate change as as whole.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/B. Roessler
2017: 'Jamaika-Aus'
"Jamaica coalition" refers to the symbolic colors of three parties in German politics: black for the conservative CDU/CSU, yellow for the neoliberal FDP and green for the Green Party. In 2017, coalition talks went on for weeks, but then came to an abrupt halt. This was "Jamaika-Aus," or Jamaica Out.
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2016: 'postfaktisch'
During the United States presidential election campaign, and after Donald Trump's victory in the fall of 2016, the word "postfaktisch" or post-factual came into common usage to denote the spread of fake news. Even then-Chancellor Angela Merkel used it. The term comes into play when public opinion is formed by emotion and resentment, rather than objective facts.
Image: DW
2015: 'Flüchtlinge'
Refugees — undoubtedly, no other issue had a bigger impact in Germany in 2015, when the Syrian civil war brought nearly a million refugees into the country. Runner-up was "Je suis Charlie," for expressing solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attack against the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. No. 3 was "Grexit," which referred to the possible expulsion of Greece from the eurozone.
