Since 1990, the American Dialect Society has selected words of the year to highlight language change, to bring a few aspects of the study of linguistics to the public’s attention, and to have a little bit of fun. The lighthearted vote is held each year at the time of the society’s annual conference.

This year’s vote will be held at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center in conjunction with the 2023 meetings of the ADS and the Linguistic Society of America. All are welcome to attend the in-person proceedings: a nominating session on Thursday, Jan. 5 (at 6-7 pm MST in Centennial A) and the final WOTY vote on Friday, Jan. 6 (at 5:30-7 pm MST in Centennial E). LSA virtual attendees will also be able to join a livestream and chat.

In advance of the WOTY selection, we are fielding nominations from the public. Below, please give your very top choice for an overall word of the year nomination. And, although this is certainly not required, we've left space for you to provide rationale for your choice if you'd like. 

We know it is hard to choose one word overall, so we've included some categories that have arisen in the past from our groups of nominees. If you have some suggestions in these groups, please include them as well. If you don't, feel free to skip them! 

We've also given you the option to suggest new or different categories of nominees that feel particularly 2022 for us to consider including, and to leave comments for anything else we might want to be concerned about when compiling these lists, conducting this vote, and composing issues of "Among the New Words" in the journal American Speech covering the outcome.

Some guidelines for making nominations:

• For the sake of the vote, “word” is broadly defined to include multiword phrases, compounds, and idiomatic expressions that behave like single lexical items.
• Ideal word-of-the-year nominations are words which demonstrate widespread usage by a large number of people, in a variety of contexts and situations, and/or which reflect important events, people, places, ideas, or preoccupations of English-speakers in North America in 2022.
• Nominated words do not have to be absolutely brand new but they should have risen to prominence or reached some kind of peak of popularity in 2022.