After opening the choice of Word of the Year up to English speakers for the first time in
its history, over the last two weeks more than 340,000 people worldwide cast their vote.
Oxford University Press is pleased to announce goblin mode as the Oxford Word of the Year
for 2022.
The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression reflecting the ethos, mood, or
preoccupations of the past twelve months, one that has potential as a term of lasting
cultural significance.
Supported by evidence of real language usage, Oxford’s editors track candidates as they emerge throughout the year, analyzing frequency statistics and other language data in the Oxford English Corpus. Previous words have included Vax (2021), Climate Emergency (2019), and Selfie (2013).
This year, the Oxford Languages lexicographers narrowed down a longlist of worthy contestants to a final three—metaverse, #IStandWith, and goblin mode—and between 21st November and 2nd December the public was invited to vote for their favourite.
The response was overwhelming, with a total of 342,079 people casting their vote and
countless more debating the merit of the finalists through Oxford’s social media outlets.
And the winner is…
GOBLIN MODE
With a landslide number of votes, goblin mode has been chosen as the Word of the Year,
with a total of 318,956 votes, making up 93 per cent of the overall vote.
Goblin mode – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin
mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or
greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’
Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February
2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline.
The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly.
Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media.
The Oxford Corpus lists many vivid examples of goblin mode, including ‘goblin mode is like
when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines’, as quoted in The Guardian newspaper.
More recently, an opinion piece in The Times stated that ‘too many of us… have gone ‘goblin mode’ in response to a difficult year.
Speaking at a special event to announce this year’s approach to selecting the Oxford Word of the Year, Ben Zimmer, American linguist and lexicographer, said: “Goblin mode really does speak to the times and the zeitgeist, and it is certainly a 2022 expression.
People are looking at social norms in new ways. It gives people the license to ditch social norms and embrace new ones.
Since the launch of the people’s choice vote, goblin mode has captured the attention of many communities online, having been a runaway favourite on social media and within
online publications, such as PC Gamer, which urged followers to ‘put aside [their] petty
differences and vote for ‘goblin mode’’ and Literary Hub, who also endorsed it, claiming it to be “way more fun” than the other choices.
