Over the past year, the use of climate-related words has increased sharply, according to the Oxford Dictionary. That’s the reason has chosen “climate emergency” as its word of the year, writes The Guardian.
According to Oxford, the definition of the word is “a situation in which urgent action must be taken to reduce or stop climate change, and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage”.
The reason why they chose this word as the word of the year is due to the fact that we have become more aware of the climate in the past year, and also because of the change in language used when we discuss this.
The Language Council is not surprised
In the last year, there have been several cases that have caused climate to get more space in the world media. In several places around the world there have been massive forest fires, including after extreme droughts, many of which are due to climate change.
There were also school strikes in several countries, and Greta Thunberg’s sailing trip from Sweden to America received a lot of attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
The choice of word of the year in the UK is therefore no surprise, says senior adviser Dagfinn Rødningen at the Language Council.
– It is not unexpected that a word related to the climate debate is chosen as the word of the year. This marked the year both at home and abroad, he told NRK.
Maybe also the climate in Norway
The climate debate also received a lot of attention in the Norwegian media in 2019. According to figures from the media company Retriever, Norwegian newsrooms have written more than 130,000 articles about climate so far this year. Throughout 2018, more than 90,000 articles were written.
Senior adviser Dagfinn Rødningen at the Language Council was not surprised that it was the word climate that was the word of the year in the UK.
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On December 3, the Language Council named Norway’s word of the year. It is possible that redness could be a word related to climate in this country too.
– We consider, among other things, words that are widely used throughout the year. And climate has been a dominant theme throughout the year, and it is natural that words related to this are included in the assessment.
He said they evaluate the word of the year based on several criteria.
– We look at the linguistic qualities that a word has. We look at whether this is a relatively new word, whether it has a creative look or an unusual composition. They can also be old words used in new ways.
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