
This is the Word of the Year, According to Merriam-Webster
Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster has announced their pick for the word of the year for 2023. This is a word that has seen new popularity in terms of searches, as well as being something relevant to the time we’re in.
Runners-up for 2023 include rizz, deepfake, coronation, dystopian, EGOT, X, implode, Doppelgänger, covenant, indict, elemental, kibbutz, and deadname. Many of those are tied to specific news stories: the coronation of Charles III, Viola Davis’s EGOT, Twitter being rebranded as X, and the submersible Titan imploding, to name a few.
The winning word of 2023, though, is not tied to one particular news story as much as its a concern of the moment: authentic. According to Merriam-Webster, “A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.”
Read more about this story at Merriam-Webster.
Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.
More breaking news here
- Read the Best of SFF with the 2025 Locus Awards Finalists
- The Most Read Books on Goodreads in April 2025
- The New York Public Library’s Best New Poetry Books
- The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists
- Bookshop.org’s Bestselling Books of the Week
- This Year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winners
- The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week
- Finalists for the 2025 Young Lions Fiction Award Announced by The New York Public Library
- The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week
- The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week