The Oxford University Press team chose “metaverse” as the second word of the year 2022, behind “Goblin mode”.
On December 4, Oxford Languages announced that the viral term “Goblin mode” had trumped “metaverse” and millions of other words to become the word of the year 2022. According to the Oxford research, usage of the term metaverse “has nearly quadrupled since the previous year in the Oxford Corpus,” fueled in part by Facebook’s rebranding to Meta in October 2021.
Metaverse lost first place in favor of “Goblin mode,” a phrase that went viral in February, “captured the prevailing mood of people rejecting the idea of returning to ‘normal life'” following the lifting of COVID lockdowns in many areas. #IStandWith took third place in the contest, fueled by social media hashtags like #IStandWithUkraine following the Russian invasion of the country in February.
“As we grapple with relatively new concepts like hybrid work in the VR space, the metaverse is especially relevant to debates about the ethics and feasibility of a fully online future,” says Oxford Languages. “A worthy opponent of ‘Goblin Mode,’ ‘metaverse’ gained vote traction among communities and publications native to the crypto space. We see the term continue to grow in use as more voices join the debate about the sustainability and viability of its future.”
The ‘goblin community’ has spoken!
We’re pleased to announce goblin mode as the #oxfordWOTY 2022.
Read more about this year’s winning choice here #TeamGoblinMode: https://t.co/NmC2UYau3U pic.twitter.com/yqQ9eIlIeQ
— Oxford University Press (@OxUniPress) December 5, 2022
In the “metaverse” presentation video posted in November, Oxford said the term dated back to “Neil Stephenson’s science fiction novel Snow Crash”, published in 1992. More than 300,000 people cast their votes, which resulted in the selection of ‘Goblin mode’ as first place, and metaverse as second.
“NFT”, or non-fungible token, won the Collins Dictionary competition for the word of 2021, while “vax” took first place at Oxford the same year. The results appear to represent a shift in the social media hype around cryptocurrency-related terms, which had reportedly subsided in the first quarter of 2022.
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