(Just check out a tweet below announcingsurreal as the Word of the Year.)
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Its absolutely a team effort.
Credit: Joanne K. Watson/Merriam-Webster via Getty Images
Were blessed to work with this many smart, funny, passionate people.
How did the accounts voice come about?
The Twitter account really feels like its a living dictionary.
Were lucky enough to have thousands of very smart, very funny people tweeting at us all the time.
The fact is that people are increasingly encountering terms like genderqueer and cisgender in conversation and online.
We just didnt realize that the whole world would be watching.
Is that a common trend after a big pop culture event like that?
Have any other pop culture-related things been searched a lot this year?SOKOLOWSKI:Absolutely.
You mentioned on Twitter that fascism has been one of the most searched words this year.
What would you have liked to see become Word of the Year?SOKOLOWSKI:Lexicographers make lousy prognosticators.
Both biglyand deplorable spiked, in part, because they were used in rare and unusual ways.
Also, 2016 was the year we finally added hella to the dictionary.
I lived in Oaklandjustlong enough to be excited about that.
We take that charge very seriously, and at the same time, we enjoy it immensely.
Thats why our Twitter is so good: Its not a marketing construct.
Its who we really are.
