‘NFT’ is the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year for 2021, beating out ‘crypto’ and ‘cheugy’
An NFT is “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, used to document ownership of an asset such as artwork or collectibles,” according to a blog post by NFT. Collins, published Wednesday.
Acting like a virtual signature, NFTs prove the authenticity of the artwork because blockchain acts as an indelible proof of ownership, meaning the artwork is “original” and the owner Their ownership can always be determined via the blockchain, even if the image or video is widely copied.
The idea of a digital revolution is also captured in another dictionary candidate for Word of the Year: “cryptocurrency”, short for “cryptocurrency”, the digital currency is challenging. traditional forms of money, according to Collins.
It also named it “metaverse” in its blog post, following Facebook’s announcement that it would change the company name to Meta.
Other chosen words reflect the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with “double-vaxxed” and “hybrid working” shortlisted.
“Climate anxiety” reflects growing concern about the damage humans are doing to the planet, while “neoplastic pronouns” is a way of referring to a person without using their name. surname or traditional gender markers, such as “he” and “she”. Collins gives “car”, “ze” and “ve” as examples of neopronouns.
Rounding out the shortlist is “Regencycore”, which is defined as the Georgian-inspired fashion sense seen on the Netflix show “Bridgerton” and “cheugy”, used to describe something that is outdated or crude.
In 2020, Collins has named “key” Word of the Year, for obvious reasons, and earlier this month Oxford Languages launched a “vax” selection for 2021.
Defined as “a colloquialism meaning vaccine or vaccination as a noun and vaccination as a verb,” vax was relatively rare until this year, the company published the Oxford English Dictionary. , said.
In September, vax appeared 72 times more frequently than the previous year, said Oxford Languages, which analyzes news content to track changes in the English language.