I’m not totally sure why the American Dialect Society word-of-the-year has captured my attention...but it has. Yesterday, while the Texas Longhorns versus the Ohio State Buckeye’s football game was readying for kickoff...ADS members in attendance of the annual conference held in Philadelphia met to vote on the word of the year. (Clearly my interests have shifted because I could really care less about watching the Cotton Bowl...but I DID care about what word would be chosen in honor of the “linguistical milestones” of 2024.)
Rawdog!
According to a press release (which you can read in its entirety by clicking here), “The American Dialect Society, in its 35th annual words-of-the-year vote, selected rawdog as the Word of the Year for 2024. More than three hundred attendees took part in the deliberations and voting, in an event hosted in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting.”
For clarity...the definition given for “rawdog” is as follows: to undertake without usual protection, preparation, or comfort (extension of earlier meaning ‘to have sex without a condom’).
To further clarify... and also according to the above press release, “Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, data czar of the New Words Committee. ‘Rawdog has recently and rapidly burst its sexual bounds to refer to engagement in any activity without the typical preparation or in stone-cold sobriety.’ Dr. Wright said. ‘In 2024 folks rawdogged flights, family dinners, and final
exams. As one nominator commented this evening, rawdog is a great choice for Word of the
Year as we collectively rawdog the future of American politics in 2025.’”
New words.
What an absolutely refreshing and whimsical idea! Creating words either from other words and switching up their meanings (thank you Gen Z) or creating new words entirely from scratch (thank you Dr. Seuss)
So to take this to any even more fun level, I began to ponder in what ways in 2024 did I rawdog something? Well, I did in fact rawdog some flights from Detroit to Asheville in 2023...so I am familiar with this. Where instead of filling the flight time with technology distractions like music or movies...I practiced presence. Observing the clouds and land moving beneath the airborne plane, observing passengers around me, observing the flight attendants move about doing their duties, basically taking in each and every moment as it unfolded.
Taking this definition into 2024, well I’d have to say...this entire year is chocked FULL of rawdogging experiences. I rawdogged moving to North Carolina, the resulting mental-remapping required from everything being new again, totally rawdogged whitewater river guiding on the Green, rawdogged the path to becoming a speaker at TedxBrevard 1.0 (which is now TedxBrevard 2.0 re-scheduled for May 3rd, 2025) totally rawdogged the arrival and aftermath of Hurricane Helene here in WNC and on and on and on.
All this said...I give a big thumbs-up to the ADS members who voted for the 2024 word-of-the-year, rawdog. Gonna be fun to mindfully apply this term to adventures yet to come. And then of course, there will be the evolution of new words and we march through 2025. Can’t wait to see what the 2025 word-of-the-year will be!
Onward and upward!
You can read what other words were nominated for this year’s vote by clicking here ...and trust me when I say, this list is a fun read. In fact, perusing the list of words selected from previous years is also a delightful read. (I’m not really a self-professed street smart kinda person...but reading these words is a window into a span of time where linguistics are bent to match a chain of events.)
Photo Credit: me rawdogging a flight
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