Was 2016 a dream or a nightmare?
Try something in between: "surreal” is Merriam-Webster's 2016 word of the year.
“Surreal” means "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream," or "unbelievable, fantastic."
Merriam-Webster tracks year-over-year trends in lookups of words on its website to come up with the top choice. This time around, there were many periods of interest in "surreal" throughout the year, often in the aftermath of tragedy. Editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski says surreal saw spikes after an attack in Brussels in March. It spiked again in July, when another attack occurred in Nice, France. An attempted coup-d’état in Turkey gave the word a third boost.
But the single biggest spike in lookups came in November, Sokolowski says. It occurred specifically on November, 9, the day after Election Day.
The word’s root is in an artistic movement of the early 20th century called Surrealism. The movement was founded around 1924 by European poets, painters, and filmmakers. They sought “truths of the unconscious mind by breaking down rational thought.” The word “surreal” began to exist on its own sometime shortly after 1937.
Word folk like Sokolowski can’t pinpoint exactly why people look up words online. But it’s definitely about more than just checking spelling. He calls the dictionary “a neutral observer of the culture,” and says people use “surreal” most in “moments of great shock and tragedy.”
Other oft-looked-up words on Merriam-Webster's Top 10 for 2016 included bigly, deplorable, icon, assumpsit, revenant, and feckless.
