Episode 78 - John Kelly and the 2025 Words of the Year

Welcome to episode 78 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to John Kelly, former head of content at Dictionary.com, previous contributor to Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, emoji lexicographer for Emojipedia, and school teacher. We discuss:

• How WOTY decisions were made at Dictionary.com

• Whether we should celebrate WOTY for getting us talking about words, or be cynical about it as a marketing exercise

• What makes a WOTY stick around

• What qualities a good WOTY should have

• The sketchier WOTYs that we've seen

• 2025’s crop of WOTY nominations - what we’ve seen so far and what might be to come

• WOTY as a barometer of the times

• ‘Fascism’ as John’s WOTY/etymology of the year and why an old word is pertinent again. 

John’s blog is here: https://mashedradish.com/ 

‘Fascism’ is here; https://mashedradish.com/2025/11/04/fascism-etymology-of-the-year-2025/ 

He is also on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/mashedradish.bsky.social 

Some of the WOTY choices we discuss are covered in the articles and posts below: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/rage-bait-2025-oxford-word-internet-language-defense/685143/?gift=h5ssLVeyARshEXLqfVq5YwEAlKAoVnByCEZqdOsZdV8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

https://theconversation.com/2025s-words-of-the-year-reflect-a-year-of-digital-disillusionment-270769

https://time.com/7334730/word-of-the-year-2025-cambridge-collins-dictionary-oxford-merriam/ 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/learning/what-teenagers-are-saying-about-6-7-and-the-era-of-brain-rot.html 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z9xbh4j

https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of 

https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed 

https://bsky.app/profile/hooved-mammal.bsky.social/post/3m7ntojukdc2y 

Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social 

Jacky Glancey 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

Raj Rana

Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys 

Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys