In 1999 it was supplemented with the Austrian word of the year to express the pluricentric nature of German and its multiple standards varieties.
[citation needed] However, various other organizations also announce Words of the Year for a variety of purposes.
The word is chosen by the editorial staff, and is selected on the basis of having come to some prominence in the Australian social and cultural landscape during the year.
The word was chosen owing to its use by celebrities, particularly on social media, as a verb meaning "to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief doing so will make it more likely to happen".
[16] Toward the end of each calendar year, Collins release a shortlist of notable words or those that have come to prominence in the previous 12 months.
The Collins Words of the Year are selected by the Collins Dictionary team across Glasgow and London, consisting of lexicographers, editorial, marketing, and publicity staff, though previously the selection process has been open to the public.
Whilst the word is not required to be new to feature, the appearance of words in the list is often supported by usage statistics and cross-reference against Collins' extensive corpus to understand how language may have changed or developed in the previous year.
[38] The selection is based on search trends on the site throughout the year and the news events that drive them.
At first, Merriam-Webster determined its contents by analyzing page hits and popular searches on its website.
[56] Since 2004, lexicographer Grant Barrett has published an unranked words-of-the-year list, usually in The New York Times.
[80][81] In addition, several German dialects have their own Wort des Jahres selection: de:Plattdeutsches Wort des Jahres, de:Wort des Jahres (Sachsen), and de:Wort des Jahres (Südtirol) In Denmark, the Word of the year [da] has been selected by Mål og Mæle [da], a popular science language magazine, during 2006-1012 and since 2009 also by the Sproglaboratoriet [da] radio program of the DR P1 radio channel in collaboration with Dansk Sprognævn (Danish Language Council).
For example, in 2011, following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the frustratingly enigmatic phrase used by Japanese officials before the explosion regarding the possibility of a meltdown - "the possibility of recriticality is not zero" (Sairinkai no kanōsei zero de wa nai) - became the top phrase of the year.