[imagesource: BusinessTech]

It’s nearly that time of the year when we honour some of the best albums, songs, music, videos, and campaigns.

While some awards or listicles don’t place too much emphasis on artistic expression, others tend to shine a light on the words we use on the regular.

There are some words that happen to capture the attention of a nation and depending on their popularity, the world.

Thanks to the plethora of social media platforms, it can ensure that certain phrases like “it is, what it is” or “slay”, for example, can become the things that point to the verbal spirit of the year.

Last year, the Oxford word of the year was “vaccine” while in South Africa, it was “lockdown”.

This was largely due to the common use of each word in a large number of social media posts. This time around, the word of the year shouldn’t come as a shock but, somehow, it kind of does.

Drum roll, please…

South Africa’s word of the year is… load shedding. Well, two words, depending on who you ask.

As a nation, we would like to thank Eskom for playing musical chairs with electricity and giving South Africans a reason to use the word to express their dismay.

According to the Daily Voice, the candidates for our word of the year were shortlisted by Pan South Africa Language Board:

“Candidates for SA Word of the Year were reviewed by Pansalb and shortlisted, and through media research company Focal Point keywords were tracked for the period October 2021 to September 2022.”

“This media data was analysed to determine the prominence of the keywords within the media and to identify the frequency with which they were used in credible print, broadcast and online media,” said Pansalb CEO Lance Schultz.

Load shedding happened to beat Phala-Phala, the first runner-up, by a landslide.