Can a word of the year tell us something about the #OmniBubble? In Escaping Oz: An Observer's Reflections, I discussed how words reflect a society's mood. Since my first economic law says that credit equals confidence and since the #OmniBubble is all about credit, what does the most recent (2018) word of the year tell us? Going back a decade, here were the words of the year as selected by lexicographers at Merriam Webster or Oxford.
2008 Bailout
2009 Admonish
2010 Austerity
2011 Pragmatic
2012 Socialism/Capitalism
2013 Science
2014 Culture
2015 -ism (Socialism, Capitalism, Racism)
2016 Post-truth¹
2017 Feminism (Webster's), Youthquake (Oxford)
¹"Post-truth" relates to using appeals to emotion or personal belief rather than objective facts to shape public opinion.
I'll leave readers to explore Escaping Oz: An Observer's Reflections for a detailed discussion of the impact and trend implied in of each of these words.
And the 2018 Oxford word of the year is....."Toxic." Suffice to say, that a word like "Toxic" requires little interpretation. I should also mention that a runner-up word was "gas-lighting", which is a manipulation of someone by psychological means into accepting a false depiction of reality.
Do words like "toxic" or "gas-lighting" convey a feeling of confidence? If you want a sense of how the financial markets might progress and by extension, the #OmniBubble, the word of the year is an excellent barometer. Have your dictionary nearby!