Word of the Year Committee Cannot Agree on What a Year Is

The American Lexicographic Society's Word of the Year selection committee has failed to produce a winner for the third consecutive month after a procedural objection regarding the definition of 'year' derailed deliberations. 'We were about to vote,' said committee chair Dr. Elizabeth Annual. 'Then Dr. Temporal raised his hand and asked: when we say word of the year, which year? The calendar year? The fiscal year? The academic year? The liturgical year? And then everything fell apart.' Dr. Marcus Temporal, a specialist in temporal semantics, argued that the committee's operating charter does not specify which twelve-month period 'the year' refers to, creating 'a definitional ambiguity that, for a group of people who define words professionally, is frankly embarrassing.' 'If we're the Word of the Calendar Year committee, our deadline is December 31,' he said. 'If we're the Word of the Fiscal Year committee, it depends on which fiscal year. If we're selecting the word that best captures the subjective experience of the past twelve months, we need to acknowledge that time has been perceived differently by different populations, and our selection criteria must account for that.' The committee spent four hours debating the question before voting to table the discussion and reconvene in two weeks, at which point Dr. Temporal raised the additional question of whether 'two weeks' meant fourteen calendar days or ten business days. 'I am going to resign,' Dr. Annual said, though she has not yet done so because the committee cannot agree on the effective date. The leading candidates for Word of the Year, whenever it is selected, include 'slop' (AI-generated low-quality content), 'delulu' (delusional, used positively), and the word 'year,' which Dr. Temporal has nominated 'as an act of self-referential commentary that I think the committee deserves.' No vote has been scheduled. The committee's next meeting will reportedly begin with a forty-five-minute discussion on what constitutes a 'meeting.'