The American English dictionary Merriam-Webster announced “they” to be its word of the year for 2019, according to CNN.
Merriam-Webster said that the reason for this was the word’s use as a gender pronoun by individuals who claim to be “nonbinary,” which they say resulted in a 313 percent increase in online searches for the word in 2019.
Emily Brewster, Merriam-Webster’s senior editor, said that while pronouns are already “among the language’s most commonly-used words,” the increased interest in “they” as a gender-neutral term resulted in a “dramatic” growth in searches for the word.
Recent “word of the year” recipients include “justice” in 2018, “feminism” in 2017, and “surreal” in 2016.