The word wonks at the Oxford University Press have declared one word has charmed its way to the top of the pack as the 2023 Word of the Year: rizz.
Rizz, “defined as ‘style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner,” is “believed to be a shortened form of the word ‘charisma,'” the publishers noted, adding the noun “can also be used as a verb, in phrases such as ‘to rizz up,’ which means ‘to attract, seduce, or chat up (a person).'”
The publisher says 30,000 language lovers around the world gave suggestions for this year’s big word, and after winnowing down those submissions to just eight, rizz got the nod.
As always, the eight finalists were pitted against each other in head-to-head heats: “Swiftie” beat “de-influencing”; “situationship” topped “parasocial”; “prompt” — as in the AI query — won against the meteorological-based “heat dome”; and finally, “beige flag” was topped by “rizz.”
Out of the finalists, rizz was deemed the word most able to “reflect the mood, ethos, or preoccupations of the year.”
Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said in the announcement, “Given that last year ‘goblin mode’ resonated with so many of us following the pandemic, it’s interesting to see a contrasting word like rizz come to the forefront, perhaps speaking to a prevailing mood of 2023 where more of us are opening ourselves up after a challenging few years and finding confidence in who we are.”