From Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s appointment as the first Black woman as the US Supreme Court justice to the overturning of Roe vs Wade, banning abortion, to protests in Iran and the death of the world’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, womanhood has been a frequent search throughout this year – all of it leading Dictionary.com to declare ‘woman’ as the Word of the Year for 2022.
“Our selection of woman as our 2022 Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary,” Dictionary.com wrote in its report.
According to Dictionary.com, searches for the word ‘woman’ increased more than 1,400 per cent, which is a massive leap for a word used so commonly. The surge was double the typical annual search volume for the word, specifically, rising at the end of March after US Justice Jackson’s selection, during which was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn to give a definition for the word ‘woman’.
The lookups involved not just the word ‘woman’ but its definition, which led to it becoming the centre of discussion.
