‘Permacrisis’: The Collins Dictionary word of the year and nine other words on the list

Collins said this year’s list of 10 words reflects the state of the world right now- and there’s not much good news

The new decade is just two years old and has seen already seen one unprecedented upheaval after another in the form of the continuing pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, extreme weather events, global inflation, energy shortages, and the rising cost of living and political crisis in the United Kingdom— to name a few.

This string of crises has manifested itself in a growing sense of uncertainty and instability or impending doom. This feeling is what is summed up by Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022- ‘permacrisis’.

‘Permacrisis’ is a word that describes living in an age of continued upheaval; Collins defines the noun as ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’. According to The Guardian, Collins chose permacrisis as the word of the year as it “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people”. It is the top word in the annual compilation of the 10 new or noteworthy words from the 18-billion word database monitored by Collins and from other sources like social media. Permacrisis is also one of six new words on the list added to CollinsDictionary.com.

Alex Beecroft, head of Collins Learning, told the BBC that language can act as a mirror to what is going on in society and the wider world, and that “this year has thrown up challenge after challenge”. He added: “Our list this year reflects the state of the world right now — not much good news…”

Here’s a list of the remaining words on the 2022 list:

Kyiv: The capital of Ukraine, situated on the Dnieper River. The inclusion of the word Kyiv signifies the determination and solidarity shown by the Ukrainian population amid the Russian invasion. Author and The Guardian’s literary editor, David Shariatmadari, wrote in the Collins blog post: “The invasion also meant that we all quickly learned the Ukrainian spelling and pronunciation of the city of Kyiv.”

Quiet Quitting: The practice of doing no more work than one is contractually obligated to do. While the phrase quiet quitting has been around for decades, it took social media and Gen Z content by storm as the pandemic contributed to changing perceptions of work-life balance.