Brain rot, brat, bro-caster. All told, 2024 delivered a good crop of word-of-the-year fodder: the annual digest of what newborn vocabulary tells us about the year we are leaving behind and what we became in its clutches.
Just as revealing are the funerals: for words that either quietly perished or are entering 2025 at death’s door, seeping relevance from some fatal wound. “Friendshoring”, after a bruising 12 months and the ugly, eviscerating saga around Nippon Steel’s takeover bid for US Steel, cannot be much longer for this world.
Some will contend that friendshoring — the concept of rerouting supply chains through countries perceived as long-term reliable allies — was too buzzy for longevity. Others will argue that the word was so cynically crafted to disguise a with-us-or-against-us bloc formation, that it would always have been replaced with something grittier.