LONDON — Many people have felt it, and now it’s reputable: “mind rot” is the Oxford dictionaries’ phrase of the 12 months.
Oxford College Press stated Monday that the evocative word “won new prominence in 2024,” with its frequency of use expanding 230% from the 12 months prior to.
Oxford defines mind rot as “the intended deterioration of an individual’s psychological or highbrow state, particularly considered as the results of overconsumption of subject matter (now in particular on-line content material) thought to be to be trivial or unchallenging.”
The phrase of the 12 months is meant to be “a phrase or expression that displays a defining theme from the previous three hundred and sixty five days.”
“Mind rot” used to be selected by way of a mixture of public vote and language research by way of Oxford lexicographers. It beat 5 different finalists: demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy and lore.
Whilst it should appear a contemporary phenomenon, the primary recorded use of “mind rot” used to be by way of Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 ode to the flora and fauna, “Walden.”
Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl stated that during its trendy sense, “’mind rot’ speaks to one of the most perceived risks of digital existence, and the way we’re the use of our unfastened time.”
“It looks like a rightful subsequent bankruptcy within the cultural dialog about humanity and era. It’s now not sudden that such a lot of electorate embraced the time period, endorsing it as our selection this 12 months,” he stated.
Ultimate 12 months’s Oxford phrase of the 12 months used to be “rizz,” a riff on aura, used to explain any individual’s talent to draw or seduce someone else.
Collins Dictionary’s 2024 phrase of the 12 months is “brat” – the album identify that changed into a summer-living supreme.
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