Britain’s media is in a meltdown and its government is gaffe-prone, so Oxford Dictionaries has chosen an apt Word of the Year: omnishambles.
Oxford University Press on Tuesday crowned the word – defined as “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterised by a string of blunders and miscalculations” – its top term of this year.
Each year Oxford University Press tracks how the English language is changing and chooses a word that best reflects the mood of the year. The publisher typically chooses separate British and American winners. This year’s American champion is “gif”, short for graphics interchange format, a common format for images on the internet.
The editors said gif was being recognised for making the crucial transition from noun to verb, “to gif”: to create a gif file of an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event. And, inevitably, to share it online. Cute kittens, Olympic champions, US President Barack Obama – they’ve all been giffed.
Coined by writers of the satirical television show The Thick of It, omnishambles has been applied to everything from government PR blunders to the crisis-ridden preparations for the London Olympics.
Oxford University Press lexicographer Susie Dent said the word was chosen for its popularity as well as its “linguistic productivity”.
