2025-02-17
1 小时 49 分钟You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.
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Hello, listeners.
Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast.
This is episode number 922 and it's called Words of the Year.
And you're going to hear me in conversation with Amber.
And we're talking about the Oxford Dictionary, Words of the year for 2024.
We recorded this conversation right at the beginning of 2025, just after Oxford published their short list of words.
But yes, the words refer to trends from 2024.
I'm going to explain everything for you.
But basically, every year, Oxford Dictionary, published by Oxford University Press, publishes a list of their wor and what Oxford does when they update their dictionary.
In fact, they are always observing the English language, always recording as much of the usage of English as they possibly can in order to observe it so that they can keep their dictionaries fully up to date.
And in their observations of the way that English is used, they often notice certain trends.
And then it's quite interesting, at the end of the year, they publish a list of words which they think are significant for the year.
Either these are words which have been just used a lot, or words which seem to represent significant cultural trends of the moment.
Okay, they might be new words which need to be added to the dictionary, or they might be existing words which have been used in a slightly different and new way, and so they need to update those listings.
But basically these are words which have been used a lot this year.
And why have they been used so much?
It's probably because they represent certain cultural moments or cultural trends of our time.
Okay, so you're going to hear Amber and I discussing all sorts of things, including the effect of social media on our mental health and the effect of smartphones and screen time.