As 2025 draws to a close, the lexicographers and linguists at the world’s most used and well-known dictionaries have begun their sometimes polarizing annual ritual of trying to capture the year’s zeitgeist through a single word. Different dictionary publishers have had different rationales—and methodologies—for picking their so-called “word of the year.” Some perform textual analyses of billions of words ; others assess what people have searched for . Whatever the case, though, the chosen words