Merriam-Webster selects 'authentic' as word of the year 2023

Authentic is the "word of the year" 2023, as per America's oldest dictionary, Merriam-Webster.

Driven by high traffic of stories and conversations around Artificial Intelligence, celebrity culture, identity and social media, the word 'Authentic' topped the charts.

What does 'authentic' mean?

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As per Merriam-Webster, 'authentic' is the "term for something we're thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever."

The dictionary describes authentic as a word with manifold meanings including "not false or imitation," a synonym of real and actual; and also "true to one's own personality, spirit, or character."

However, a blog post announcing the word of the year also says that while authenticity is a "desirable quality", the word is "hard to define and subject to debate", these two reasons it said, "sends many people to the dictionary."

Why were people searching for 'authentic'?

In America, as per the US' oldest dictionary, the rise of artificial intelligence and its impact in terms of the increasingly common deep fake videos, actors' contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics drove the searches.

As "the line between 'real' and 'fake' has become increasingly blurred," brands, celebrities and social media influencers all aspire to be 'authentic', it says.

Pushing the search were celebrities like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk.

What other words were popular?

Other contenders for 'Word of the Year' included 'deepfake' — "an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said."

Also on the list was "indict" thanks to the indictment of former US President Donald Trump in four separate cases.

'Rizz' a trending internet-driven slang was one of the major runner-ups. The word that means "romantic appeal or charm" was added to the dictionary in September. 'Coronation' thanks to British King Charles III taking over as monarch also saw a spike. Furthermore, as record-high temperatures plagued the world, 'dystopian' also topped the search.

(With inputs from agencies)