15 January 2019 - Australia: 'Me Too' Is Macquarie Dictionary's Word of the Year
'Me Too' beats 'big dick energy' as Macquarie Dictionary's 2018 word of the year
Steph Harmon (The Guardian, 15/01/2019)
“Big dick energy”, “single-use” and “deepfake” have missed out on being named 2018’s word of the year, with Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary landing on “Me Too” for its annual honour.
The phrase, first coined by American social activist Tarana Burke in the mid-2000s, went viral in 2017 following a tweet by actor Alyssa Milano, who – in the wake of allegations against Harvey Weinstein – encouraged victims of sexual harassment or assault to share their stories in order to show the breadth of the problem.
The phrase has been added to the dictionary, where it is defined as an adjective “of or relating to the Me Too movement … [or] an accusation of sexual harassment or sexual assault”; and as a verb, which means “to accuse (someone) of having committed sexual harassment or sexual assault” – as in, “to be Me Tooed”.
'Me Too' named Macquarie Dictionary's 2018 word of the year
Mary Ward (The Sydney Morning Herald, 15/01/2019)
It is not a single word, and you probably first heard it in 2017, but – despite this – "Me Too" has been named Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year for 2018.
The phrase beat out 15 shortlisted words for the top spot, including "deepfake", Scandinavian wellness trend "hygge" and "BDE" (that's "big dick energy", Twitter's favourite description of both Ariana Grande and Anthony Boudain).
"Me Too" was first coined by US activist Tarana Burke in 2006, who used it to create a campaign encouraging women of colour to share their stories of sexual abuse on now defunct social media network, MySpace.
Macquarie Dictionary word of the year goes to 'me too', in a year filled with digital uncertainty
Tiger Webb (ABC News, 15/012019)
Oxford Dictionaries gave us toxic. For the Collins, it was single-use. The American Dialect Society chose tender-age shelter. It's word of the year season, and the Australian votes are in.
Macquarie Dictionary, one of two Australian lexicographical entities to pick a word of the year, has revealed its overall choice for 2018's word of the year: me too, in its expanded noun and adjectival senses.
The dictionary's word of the year panel also gave honourable mentions to deepfake (a computer-generated video of an individual, typically created without consent for malicious purposes) and big dick energy (a noun denoting a highly specific sense of self-confidence).
The power of MeToo: how feminism changed the dictionary
Van Badham (The Guardian, 15/01/2019)
MeToo has received its fair recognition from Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary, becoming its word of the year.
That dictionary defines it as an adjective, describing a relation of or to “the Me Too movement … [or] an accusation of sexual harassment or sexual assault”. It also has a meaning as a verb – the action of accusing “(someone) of having committed sexual harassment or sexual assault” – as in, “he has been MeTooed”.
Although the term now denotes a movement, it was conceived in 2006 as “a kind of bat signal between survivors of sexual violence” by Tarana Burke, who used it as the name of an activist group.