Front Porch: It’s like so weird that they like chose like -ussy

I know, I know – I pay way too much attention to words, their use/misuse and just how darn interesting they are.

At the end of each year, I write an entire column about the words of the year that are selected by a number of dictionary producers and other word-oriented organizations. But absent from that column is the word of the year selected by the grand-daddy and grand-poobah of them all – the American Dialect Society, which holds its annual meeting with the Linguistic Society of America the first week of the new year, a couple of weeks after my self-imposed deadline.

This organization of serious professionals – linguists, lexicographers, grammarians, editors/writers, historians and others – is the only one in the word-of-the-year game not tied to a commercial interest and is the longest-standing one to vote on such word matters (their first word of the year came in 1990 –” bushlips,” which was defined as insincere political rhetoric).

I usually just let it go, but this year their choice for 2022 was so different from what the others selected – words such as “homer,” “woman,” “gaslighting” and “permacrisis” – and so not-what-I’d-expect a perhaps pedantic group of wordies to find the most significant contribution to language this past year, that I just had to go there, although delicately.

Plus, there are a few other wordish things that cry out from within me to give voice to way in advance of my end-of-the-year review.

In announcing “-ussy” as their word of the year, Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, commented that “-ussy” highlights how creativity in new word formation has been embraced online in a number of venues, such as TikTok. He described it, carefully, as a “playful suffix” that generates new slang terms. (Added to the word “boy,” the word “bussy” results.)

It is a suffix (usually) with evolving usage, and, clearly, not without controversy in that usage.

“The (-ussy) process has been so productive lately on social media sites and elsewhere that it has been dubbed ‘-ussification,’ ” Zimmer said, while noting that this is not the first time the organization has named an affix to be word of the year. In 1998, the prefix “e-” (as in “email”) was the honoree.

The organization also announced subcategory word selections for 2022, which are revealing and of interest, too – Most Useful/Most Likely to Succeed: “quiet quitting,” doing no more than the minimum required for a job; Political Word of the Year: “dark Brandon,” sinister, powerful alter ego of Joe Biden; Digital Word of the Year: “-dle,” suffix for Wordle-like games; Euphemism of the Year: “special military operation,” Russia’s designation for the invasion of Ukraine.

And in another word matter – Each year most dictionaries add new selections to their collection of included words. I had always thought that the choices were widely used words new on the scene. For example, in 2022, words and phrases such as “side hustle” and “supply chain” were welcomed into official dictionaryland.

But so was “pumpkin spice,” which has been around a long time. Just to be clear, it stands for a combination (usually) of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg – spices used in making pumpkin pie. We’re nauseatingly inundated each fall with everything from pumpkin spice drinks to candles and way too much other stuff (personal opinion).

When inaugurating “pumpkin spice” into the Merriam-Webster dictionary fold last year, editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski noted that “every word has to grow into itself,” commenting that “COVID” was immediate, but that others take longer. He said that the first documented use of “pumpkin spice” was in 1931, but not until last year was it officially added to Merriam-Webster.

Who knew that there were waiting periods for some common words and phrases?

And finally, a reader wrote and asked me, with some urgency, to please write about abuse of the word “like.” Since this is a pet peeve of mine, too, I am more than happy to oblige.

She pointed out an overheard sentence: “My son is like so cute, but he likes to do his own thing, and I’m like, I don’t know like what to do.” Seems like an exaggeration, but it’s not. What it is, is lazy speech.

Technically, in that context, “like” is a filler word (the overuse of which is considered filleritis), a word allowing the speaker to buy a fragment of time to think of what to say next. This particular filler word is an American English socio-dialect that evolved in the 1970s in California’s San Fernando Valley and was known as “valley-speak.” It rapidly spread across America and morphed into “mall-speak.”

Other annoying time-dated speaking, fashion or pop-up cultural trends have had the good sense to fade into oblivion after their moment in the sun. But this one just won’t die. It isn’t even cute or endearing or clever or, frankly, anything but stupid-sounding (again, personal opinion).

Everybody. Please. Stop. Using.” Like.” As. A. Filler. Word. You sound like an idiot.

Word of the year. Waiting periods for words. Assassination of “like.” I just love this stuff.

Stefanie Pettit can be reached at upwindsailor@comcast.net.