Coded
If something has the suffix “-coded”, it essentially means it has those traits. Not bothering to take your dressing gown off for the work Teams call? That’s so burnout-coded. Queuing for drinks in a line that’s perpendicular to the bar? That’s Gen Z-coded. Rishi Sunak calling a UK general election in the pouring rain? Loser-coded. (That’s one I might have inflicted upon readers back in June.)
“The lookalike contests are so Great Depression era coded,” posted writer Jeremy O. Harris in one great example of the genre. Ending sentences with the word coded? Very 2024-coded.
Romantasy
Deserving of its place on the Oxford words of the year shortlist if not necessarily a shoo-in for all bookshelves was romantasy. This portmanteau of romance and fantasy is underpinned by a bona fide commercial trend: authors of steamy, otherworldly stories suddenly selling a bucketload of books.
Time to stop being coy and put the one true ring on it: sexy elves are the hot new thing in the publishing industry. In this subgenre, as in real life, finding a handsome dragon who loves and respects you is bound to be an epic quest.
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Unrenewed
In the television streaming business, unrenewed is the new cancelled. It’s a kinder way of saying “that’s all, folks”, though it may also be a more accurate one in cases where a show works perfectly fine as a one-and-done series and wasn’t designed to be a “returnable” anyway. The term has gained traction since the pandemic sparked an “unrenewal wave”, with pullbacks in spending across the industry in 2023 and 2024 leaving more shows struggling to avoid being unrenewed.
It’s when people start using it to describe the status of their relationships with friends and partners that we’ll know it’s really taken off.
First buddy
“I think Musk is becoming like first buddy,” ventured CNN political analyst Gloria Borger in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election. Elon Musk, for his part, declared himself happy with the moniker. The media ran with it, while likening Musk’s stint at Mar-a-Lago to that of the unwanted hanger-on or guest who far outstays his welcome
Now installed as co-chairman of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Tesla chief executive isn’t short of titles. But even if the Trump-Musk narcissists’ alliance falls apart as predicted, “first buddy” is bound to linger at the top of phrases that once heard cannot be unheard.
QuitTok
“Discover the #QuitTok trend as people share their journeys of leaving corporate jobs and embracing new paths,” suggests TikTok. This leads those of us trapped in dead-end, promotion-less positions straight down an ever-scrolling path of immense, uncontrollable envy.
Go there if you must but all you’ll find is people so happy to be quitting, they self-capture every ecstatic moment of handing in their ID cards and skedaddling out of there. This glee then joins a pantheon of similar QuitTok videos. The unluckier, however, use the same hashtag to covertly film themselves being made redundant.
Strategic business transformation change initiatives
Speaking of redundancies, word reaches us that they’re not called redundancies any more. They’re called “strategic business transformation change initiatives”. This one comes courtesy of lender PTSB. Having dropped the “permanent” from its brand name a couple of years ago, it marked the 2024 Christmas season by giving staff the opportunity to make their jobs less permanent too.
This voluntary redundancy scheme follows “a period of transformational growth” that now requires a period in which it seeks to “improve organisational effectiveness and efficiency”, meaning it needs to cut costs.
Super-election
Super-election is not typically a noun but an adjective, ie this has been a super-election year. In 2024, almost half the world’s population across more than 70 countries had the opportunity to elect their political leaders – a fact that prompted the EU’s diplomatic service to note that democracy “cannot be taken for granted and requires our continuous attention”.
It certainly felt like it did over the past 12 months. The super-election year was notably super bad for sitting governments, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil bucking a trend that saw incumbents swept aside by those who promised more.
Brain rot
The Oxford dictionary word of the year was two words that should be easy to slip into conversation this festive season. Brain rot: the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterised as likely to lead to such deterioration.
The term gained new prominence in 2024, which doesn’t seem like great news in a super-election year. Then again, it might beat doomscrolling. The first recorded use dates back to 1854, but it took a while to take hold as they didn’t have TikTok then.
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