910. The final Grammar Girl word-of-the-year vote came down to “inflation” and “quiet quitting.” We look at the interesting arguments voters made for both. Plus, we look at why some words that start with “un-” mean “not” and others mean “reversed”— and about the especially interesting words that can mean either (and why).
| Transcript:
Video Production: Holly Hutchings
“Un”-words segment by Edwin Battistella who teaches linguistics and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he has served as a dean and as interim provost. His books include Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others? and Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology. It originally appeared on the OUP blog and appears here with permission.
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I was unaware of these un-words. Thanks!❤
I feel like "quiet quitting" is a phrase that was heavily used in media, but it describes something that many people didn't experience first-hand. On the other hand, "inflation" (while also heavily used in media) is more a word of the people, because it's something that everyone experienced in 2022.
I picked the word based on the frequency, how often I used it and talked about it, but it doesn't help that my mother and I are very frugal people so we're always talking about finances so that could be a bias; we did discuss quiet quitting, but it had no impact on us; we just talked about it just because maybe it was in the news or others talked about it; for me it felt like we talked inflation like every single day for the whole year, even into the new year