Witerati: New Year Resolves, se-rizz-ly!

Every time when a year rings out and a new one rings in, one is driven to keep a tryst with that thing one hasn’t touched through the year — Dictionary.

Credit it on vocabulary builders like Oxford Dictionary which comes out with its Shortlist for Word of the Year. It gives us food for thought with new words to chew on. Some easy to swallow, some not.

The Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year 2023 had its day out closer home when yesteryear Bollywood diva, “Zeenie baby” (Zeenat Aman) put out a social media post, penning an ode to her late co-star Feroz Khan.

Zeenat paid him a heartfelt tribute by saying Feroz was the only Bollywood leading man she knew to have truly possessed “rizz”.

That obviously had many of us darting for dictionaries. Actually, not dictionary, but that Baap of all encyclopaedias — Google.

The Oxford Dictionary Shortlist for 2023 may have set the mood for 2024. It may have gifted us many a New Year resolve that could around its Shortlist revolve.

Here’s picking some Oxford favourites that could go beyond literal definitions to describe our life in the coming year.

Simply Situationship

That’s the hot new term for the nuances of new-age relationships that are non-committal. New wine in old bottle as far as some types of live-in relationships go.

If lack of commitment is its inherent sentiment, how about being in a different sort of situationship in 2024.

A situationship with ChatGPT!

Neither here nor there. Yet very much here. Not knowing whether AI will ditch us, or when.

De-influencing Dilemma

This term denotes a kind of downsizing the role of those ruling brand ambassadors of consumption driven by the social media — Influencers.

Decluttering. That’s the underlying sentiment of “Deinfluencing”.

Year 2023 did toss up the dilemma — how much is too much? There mushroomed Influencers and more Influencers, left, right and centre.

There are Macro Influencers, Kerala to Kashmir. If you’ve heard of Foodfluencers Suresh Pillai of Kochi with approx 900k following and Tassiya Hamid of Srinagar with a 124k following, you’ve got the drift of the phenomenon.

Then there are micro influencers and nano influencers to city influences. Who better than Lakshmi Vignesh M. to show how to take influencing to new glocal levels with “Voice of Erode”!

Influencing thus has taken over our lives. Influencers are driving our decisions - what to consume, where, when, why.

It may thus be a good idea for New Year Resolutions Lists to script the Oxford Dictionary shortlisted favourite “Deinfluencing” into our daily vocabulary.

It may just be our need of the hour — this social media Detox, Downsizing.

Much ado about “rizz”

Ah, as for the word that won the crown of 2023, aren’t we cu-rizz!

Who wouldn’t wish for more “rizz” in 2024!

Alas, the challenge for “Pro-Agers” (well, that’s another coinage post-midlifers were barely learning to contend with) is that “pro-ageism” and “rizz” may spell more a case of “never the twain shall meet”.

The New Year resolve thus could be — how to make the twain meet.

How to be a Pro-Ager, and still boast of ‘rizz’.

Maybe the Oxford dictionary will dish out a new word in 2024 to describe this dilemma.

The curious case of What’s in a name, se-rizz-ly!