Merriam-Webster has announced their annual Word of the Year and the winner is… “they”! It’s been a surprisingly big year for the common pronoun, which experienced a 313% search increase in 2019. As the dictionary powerhouse explains:
“English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years. More recently, though, they has also been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary, a sense that is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as social media and in daily personal interactions between English speakers. There’s no doubt that its use is established in the English language, which is why it was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary this past September.
Nonbinary they was also prominent in the news in 2019. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA) revealed in April during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Equality Act that her child is gender-nonconforming and uses they. Singer Sam Smith announced in September that they now use they and them as pronouns. And the American Psychological Association’s blog officially recommended that singular they be preferred in professional writing over “he or she” when the reference is to a person whose gender is unknown or to a person who prefers they. It is increasingly common to see they and them as a person’s preferred pronouns in Twitter bios, email signatures, and conference nametags.”
Check out the full list of the year’s most popular words here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year/they
Thanks for this post! Very relevant for our profession. Last year, I was involved in formulating guidelines in a Microsoft style guide for German translators. One of the focus areas was gender-unbiased language. It is a part of language that is evolving quickly as the community is solidifying their wishes on how to be addressed. Translators as communicators need to stay on top of the development.