Word of the Year

Based on the clue, guess the Word of the Year, as designated by the American Dialect Society.
Some answers are more than one word, and some are not "words" in the traditional sense.
Quiz by jmellor13
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Last updated: January 10, 2022
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First submittedAugust 22, 2020
Times taken1,175
Average score47.8%
Rating3.59
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Hint
Answer
1999: The name of a "bug" that was primed to bring society to its knees. Then nothing happened.
Y2K
2000: It was "hanging" in Florida ballots, and left the presidential election hanging along with it.
Chad
2001: The date of the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
9/11
2002: George Bush insisted that Saddam had them. Turns out he didn't. Or did he? No, wait. He didn't. (Four words).
Weapons of Mass Destruction
2003: The "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" team helped popularize this term for a fashionable but heterosexual male.
Metrosexual
2004: The two-word term for a state whose electoral votes were up for grabs in the U.S. presidential election.
Purple State
2005: Stephen Colbert's coinage for the perception that a proposition is true despite a lack of evidence or logic supporting the proposition.
Truthiness
2006: Past-tense participle describing something that has been demoted or devalued, named after an object that was itself "demoted" in this year.
Plutoed
2007: Adjective describing a risky mortgage that became a much-discussed element of the 2008 global financial crisis.
Subprime
2008: Term for the government's financial aid that rescued large companies, especially financial companies. Except Lehman Brothers.
Bailout
2009: A social media message of 140 characters or less.
Tweet
2010: A program specially-designed for use on a smartphone.
App
2011: A common verb, used in this specific sense to describe the act of taking over a location as an act of defiance, or to demand change in policy.
Occupy
2012: An internet neologism used to identify a particular topic, and help determine which topics were "trending."
Hashtag
2013: A common conjunction that internet mavens began using in a facetious and grammatically incorrect way, most commonly preceding the word "reasons." Must have been a slow news year.
Because
2014: Three-word rallying cry born of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, among others, that became an influential social movement.
Black Lives Matter
2015: A pronoun that had previously been "plural-only" before gaining acceptance as a singular pronoun in recognition of queer and nonbinary people.
They
2016: Two-word term for a disastrous and embarrassing situation, often used to describe the United States during this year, especially in election season.
Dumpster Fire
2017: Two-word term describing disinformation spread across social media, or, when used by President Trump, describing any media coverage that did not portray him positively.
Fake News
2018: Three-word euphemism for detention camps on Texas's southern border where migrant children were held after being separated from their parents.
Tender Age Shelters
2019: Much-discussed grammatical parts of speech (see 2015 answer) by which someone identifies his or her preferred gender.
Pronouns
2020: The name of a bug that actually did bring society to its knees.
Covid
2021: Term for a violent uprising against a government, which over 2,000 people attempted by storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Insurrection
+2
Level 30
Aug 22, 2020
Wow I can see you've put almost of hard work into this!
+4
Level 92
May 26, 2021
I enjoyed the writing for most of the clues, and bookending the quiz with bugs bringing us to our knees was clever. Have a nomination
+1
Level 67
May 27, 2021
Wow, thanks. I appreciate it.
+3
Level 82
May 26, 2021
Maybe consider accepting "garbage" or "trash" for the first word of the 2016 phrase?
+1
Level 67
May 27, 2021
Good suggestion. I added those and a few more fun type-ins for that one.
+2
Level 51
Jun 8, 2021
2020...this is the only bug to be scared of :)
+3
Level 62
Jun 9, 2021
Excellent quiz! Was "they" really plural-only until 2015? How did you manage before that, when not knowing the sex of someone?
+4
Level 67
Jun 9, 2021
It was. The proper singular pronoun for someone whose sex you don't is "one." It's one of those instances where most of us knowingly use the wrong pronoun because the right word sounds ostentatious. For example, the correct way is to say "It's I" rather than "It's me." But the former makes it sound like you are riding in on your steed, so we just say "it's me" because it sounds more natural. Same with "they," which has always been used informally as a singular pronoun for hypothetical people, but it has recently been accepted as grammatically correct, so it can be used in formal instances (e.g., journalism) as well.
+1
Level 59
Nov 7, 2022
It has been used since the 14th century, although it was considered incorrect for a lot of this time.
+4
Level 57
Jan 11, 2022
Pretty easy to guess their political views based on this lol.

Great quiz!

+1
Level 69
Nov 7, 2022
I thought the same thing.
+1
Level 50
May 7, 2022
Chad? Giga chad?
+1
Level 76
Nov 7, 2022
i'm sure you meant this as a joke somehow but since no one else has, i have to ask: for the 2019 clue why have you insisted on 'his or her' rather than 'their'? nice little callback but i don't see what you're achieving by insisting on the clunkier phrasing that deliberately excludes certain of the general populace. are you spoofing people who make fun of the 'radical wokerati', or are you just one of those yourself?
+3
Level 67
Nov 8, 2022
I am neither. I am the product of 20 years of rigorous private schooling that included a lot of emphasis on grammar, including the rule that when using singular pronouns of indeterminate gender, the correct construction is "his or her." You're not seeing me try to exclude anybody. It's simply a force of habit and the product of an education completed well before the singular "they" came into common parlance. I wasn't thinking about any kind of political point. It's just how I've been writing for over three decades, and it comes without thinking. So I'll make you a deal: I will change the clue to "they" if you agree not to be so presumptuous and condescending towards people when you don't know their motivations. Deal?
+2
Level 64
Nov 8, 2022
shows quite aptly the political capture at the American Dialect Society over the last 2 decades.
+2
Level ∞
Nov 10, 2022
Great quiz idea. Awful choice of "words" which seem maximized for political shock value and in about half the cases are phrases not words. I just don't understand how people live their life like this; examining everything - even language - under the microscope of a toxic culture war. Was it always this way? I don't think so.

No fault to the quiz maker of course! I just wanted to feature this quiz and was very disappointed by the list chosen by the American Dialect Society. I'd write them a letter if I thought it would make any difference.