Macquarie Dictionary names ‘fake news’ its word of the decade

It was used as a weapon against media by former US President Donald Trump and it’s “here to stay” – fake news was voted word of the decade. A team from Macquarie University asked Australians to choose from a shortlist the word they thought should be the first official Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Decade. The committee’s pick for word of the year in 2016, fake news beat out runner-up mansplain by the “thinnest of margins,” the team said. “While we think of fake news as a coinage of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, it was around before then. However, it became emblematic of that campaign and the four years that followed it,” the Macquarie team said. “It became part of our lives so quickly and was so overwhelming that school courses had to be developed to teach children strategies for detecting fake news.” The experts added that fake news later gained a second definition in the Macquarie, as a term used to refer to “information that is viewed as being opposed or detrimental to someone’s own position – whether it is factual or not”. “Words are powerful and the ease with which we see this term being thrown around to instantly rob something of its credibility can be very damaging,” they wrote. “It looks like it’s a term that’s here to stay.” The term used as a retort to complaints that seem trivial when held against much greater global issues, First World problem, finished third. Australia's voting also revealed words that may have lost their relevance over time. The people’s pick for 2014, share plate, received the lowest number of votes. The Macquarie team pondered whether a global pandemic had something to do with its weak showing in the ballot box. Phantom vibration syndrome, which describes the sensation of feeling or hearing a phone vibrate only to find a blank screen, also found itself at the back of the pack. “The Committee chose it as the winner in 2012, but it does seem a little cumbersome. In retrospect, the runner-up crowdfunding would have been a better bet,” the wordsmiths said. Framily was people’s choice in 2017. But the portmanteau of friends and family used to explain the closeness people feel to people they’re not related to “failed to launch”. Past winners of Word of the Year: 2011: Burkini (committee’s choice), fracking (people’s choice) 2012: Phantom vibration syndrome (committee’s choice), First World problem (people’s choice) 2013: Infovore (committee’s choice), onesie (people’s choice) 2014: Mansplain (committee’s choice), share plate (people’s choice) 2015: Captain’s call (committee’s choice and people’s choice) 2016: Fake news (committee’s choice), halal snack pack (people’s choice) 2017: Milkshake duck (committee’s choice), framily (people’s choice) 2018: Me Too (committee’s choice), single-use (people’s choice) 2019: Cancel culture (committee’s choice), robodebt (people’s choice) 2020: Doomscrolling (committee’s choice), Karen (people’s choice)