Maybe it isn’t at the absolute bleeding edge of culture any more, but pop music is still there or thereabouts and that has been confirmed by no less an authority as the Cambridge Dictionary who has chosen as its Word of the Year one that a certain type of pop star often uses.
That word is ‘manifest’. It first came into the English language in the medieval period. Its most commonly used as an adjective meaning ‘easily noticed’ or ‘obvious’. It can also be used as a noun as ‘a list of cargo or passengers for customs’. But it’s most recent usage has been as a verb and the Cambridge dictionary now define it as "to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief doing so will make it more likely to happen".
You may recall that Dua Lipa used the word during her set at Glastonbury, saying that dreamt of headlining the festival for years. “I’ve written this moment down and wished for it and dreamt it and worked so hard,” she told the crowd.
The English language is fascinating, isn’t it? You could argue that there is a perfectly good word already there for what Dua Lipa is describing: ‘daydreaming’. Ahh, but ‘daydreaming’ sounds passive, disconnected from reality, as if your head is in the clouds. (Which Dua Lipa’s probably was at the time.) But ‘manifest’ sounds somehow more active and purposeful. Ultimately though don’t they amount to the same thing?
Wendalyn Nichols, publishing manager of the Cambridge Dictionary, said: "Manifest won this year because it increased notably in look-ups, its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time."
She said there were three considerations before announcing the word of the year: "What word was looked up the most, or spiked? Which one really captures what was happening in that year? And what is interesting about this word from a language point of view?"
Meanwhile the Collins English Dictionary has chosen ‘brat’ as its word of the year. Usually seen in conjunction with the word ‘spoilt’ to mean an annoying, badly-behaved child, it’s been repurposed by Charli XCX to mean a woman who revels in her own messiness and turned from a pejorative into something that denotes honesty and authenticity, with a bit of old skool rock n’ roll swagger thrown in there too.
And what are the runners-up to ‘brat’ in the Collins list? Well, they include neologisms such as ‘brainrot’, ‘looksmaxxing’, ‘delulu’ and, ahem, ‘rawdogging’. So now you know.
