“Our selection of woman as our 2022 Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary," Dictionary.com wrote in its report.
Apparently, in 2022, many key events took place across the world with women leading the way. For example, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's becoming the first Black woman as the US Supreme Court justice, banning abortion, protests in Iran and the death of the world's longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
Dictionary.com said, searches for the word ‘woman’ increased more than 1,400%, which is a massive leap for a word used so commonly.
The surge was double the typical annual search volume for the word, specifically, rising at the end of March after US Justice Jackson's selection during which the definition of the word ‘woman’ came into focus.
“It was a rare case of not just a word in the spotlight, but a definition. We at Dictionary.com weren’t the only ones to take notice. The prominence of the question and the attention it received demonstrate how issues of transgender identity and rights are now frequently at the forefront of our national discourse. More than ever, we are all faced with questions about who gets to identify as a woman (or a man, or neither). The policies that these questions inform transcend the importance of any dictionary definition—they directly impact people’s lives," the report stated.
