Oxford University Press

We’re pleased to share that our 2024 Oxford Word of the Year is brain rot! 🧠📱 Established in 2004, Oxford Word of the Year shines a light on the language that has shaped the past year. Our lexicographers examine data and trends to track candidates that reflect our conversations and the cultural shifts, patterns, and sentiments 💬 Our 2024 choice, brain rot, has gained new prominence as its usage increased across social media platforms this year. Selected through a combination of voting, public commentary, and expert analysis, it captures concerns about the negative effects of the overconsumption of low-quality online content. Did #BrainRot have your vote? ⭐ https://bit.ly/3zLStzO #OxfordWOTY

Wellbeing is essential for equipping children with the skills needed to thrive in a complex world. 🌍 In recent years, children have faced numerous challenges, and schools worldwide are recognizing the importance of promoting wellbeing in the curriculum. This new series of activity books, My Happiness and Me, addresses the #wellbeing of #students and provides a deeper look at the complex factors that influence it. Read the full interview with CEO and Co-founder of Rangeet, Simran Mulchandani ⭐ https://bit.ly/41EU31M

As we near the end of 2024, I wanted to take a moment to look back over the year and reflect on what we’ve achieved here at Oxford University Press. I continue to be impressed by the commitment of colleagues to our mission- the focus on quality, and the strong collaboration that I see across our organization daily. It is these qualities that have underpinned so much of our work this year:   - Announcing ‘brain rot’ as our Word of the Year, sparking conversations worldwide about usage of the term and what it represents in today’s society.  - Running a month-long Global AI Fair for our colleagues to demonstrate the impact and potential of artificial intelligence.  - The announcement of the First Book Prize, giving early-career researchers the opportunity to publish original, innovative work fully open access.  - The launch of The Essential Series in Pakistan, making OUP's quality content accessible to many more schools.  - Reinforcing our commitment to sustainability with our Net Zero target.  We’re proud that our work with BookAidInternational, our long-standing charity partner, is supporting individuals living in refugee camps in Lebanon, as well as Ukrainian refugees in Europe.   Meanwhile our Road to Literacy campaign in South Africa in partnership with AVBOB Industries aims to improve reading and literacy in schools.     While these are just a handful of our successes during 2024, I am proud of everything that OUP has achieved.  I hope those of you who celebrate the festive period have a restful time, and I look forward to connecting in the New Year.

Every year, our Season’s Greetings card is shared across the globe. The key words for this year were ‘heritage’, ‘timeless’, and ‘pattern’. The aim was to create a design that felt celebratory, but not of one specific location, prompting a search a little deeper into the archives for something that was more global. The leaves are hand-sketched from archived crests of the Press over the years. The illustration style feels like paper cut-outs, but they’re all illustrated digitally. That choice, married with the beautiful icy neutral Blue, and Oxford Blue and Ruskin Red from our heritage palette, makes for something that’s festive but also unexpected and delightful. It gets better and more interesting the longer you look at all of its intricate details.

When the OED was originally conceived in 1857, quotations from English literature were sent in on small pieces of paper known as ‘slips’ to illustrate real evidence of words in use. Although our editors still receive ‘slips’ of sorts today, these are usually digital. However, they recently received some paper submissions after a schoolteacher from New Zealand sent her students' inventions to the team. 📨 The submissions included some of the words below... 👇 Find out how the submission process has changed across decades ➡ https://bit.ly/3CEbDsA

5 days of #brainrot.   This week, we announced our #OxfordWOTY and the internet had…a lot to say! Here’s a snapshot of what’s happened so far…   💆♂️Vogue argued that Brain Rot isn’t always a bad thing 🖊️CNN called it a ‘modern condition’ familiar to most of us 🧠The Guardian created a quiz to identify if you were suffering 🤪TikTok did its thing… 📖Threads users started an antidote trend…spoiler, it’s reading 😉We made memes    And MUCH more.   Add to the conversation, we know you want to…⬇️

Our 2024 Word of the Year "captures a phenomenon that’s all too familiar in our internet-saturated culture." - Forbes 'Brain rot', which refers to the negative impacts of endless scrolling, has sparked serious discussions, and usage of the term increased 230% between 2023 and 2024 in our language data. Read 'Oxford Word Of The Year, ‘Brain Rot,’ Defines Our Screen-Fixated Times' here: https://bit.ly/4g0zYYs

Henry David Thoreau referenced brain rot in 1854. In 2024, we've named it our Word of the Year. It's not unusual for the words of influencers to gain popularity, but the influential philosopher Thoreau was born more than 200 years ago. KUOW Public Radio explores the question: is the new rot the same as the old rot? 🔗 https://bit.ly/3ZzYKZs

It might be more than a century old, but our 2024 Word of the Year has taken on new significance in the digital age. We've seen widespread use of the term, ’brain rot’, in 2024, and alongside it - a broader, more serious conversation about the negative impacts of excessive consumption of content. 🤳 Discover more insights into this year's WOTY: https://bit.ly/3ZzxTgh

The Oxford Word of the Year captures the language that has reflected our world over the past year... and sometimes we choose a winner that's not a singular word. Fiona McPherson explains why this is, on BBC Scotland 🔍💬 For those who want more expert analysis and insight on this year's winner, brain rot, check out our latest article! https://lnkd.in/eYgRdk3u