In a nightly binge, you leave your sleeping den in your shabby T-shirt and move to the kitchen. You dig into a box of sugared corn flakes and stuff the sticky grains into your mouth. With that same sticky hand you can fish a wet gherkin out of the jar and eat it straight out of the hand. Then you crawl back into bed, wearing your pickle juice-stained T-shirt.
Creatures that display this kind of behavior are in ‘goblin fashion‘. Kind of like the big, ugly goblins, aka orcs, in The Lord of the Rings. The Oxford Dictionary voted this internet term Word of the Year after an election.
“Unashamedly self-indulgent, lazy, careless, or greedy, usually in a way that defies social norms or expectations,” defines the prestigious English dictionary. Goblin fashion, according to the Oxford Dictionary, reflects the ethos and mood of the past twelve months.
Goblin fashion became popular on the internet in February 2022, after the corona measures largely disappeared and a group of people emerged who refused to return to normal life. That group had had enough time at home to think about the unfeasible lifestyle promoted on social media: exercise every morning; healthy cooking; use your spare time by painting or meditating.
It was time to turn on your goblin mode. The term legitimizes the comfortable feeling of being deliciously depraved. Like working from home from bed with a bag of chips next to you. On new unfiltered social media platforms like BeReal, an attempt is made to reflect raw reality and even take pride in your goblin-like pursuits.
2022 was the year in which many people unleashed social norms and expectations. “Goblin fashion really expresses the spirit of the times and it is definitely an expression of 2022,” said American linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer at the ceremony. “People look at social norms in a new way. That gives them the freedom to discard societal norms and embrace new ones.”
Metaverse
The two other Word of the Year nominations were ‘metaverse’ and the hashtag #IStandWith’. It is quite logical that a prestigious body such as the Oxford Dictionary nominates digital terms. A lot of new words nowadays come from the internet. This year, the American dictionary Merriam-Webster nominated the word ‘gaslighting’; a term that has also gained popularity online and denotes the practice of grossly deceiving someone, especially for one’s own benefit.
Our own Dutch Van Dale is also keeping up with the digital age and has put the internet word ’emoji baby’ on the shortlist of the Van Dale Word of the Year. Definition: ‘infant or young child whose face is covered with an emoji in a photo shared on social media for privacy reasons’.
Anyway. Those who want to spend the weekend free of all social obligations in their own nest can simply say that he, she or them is going into goblin mode.
#Oxford #Dictionary #chooses #goblin #fashion #word #year #expression #zeitgeist