We all love words. But which word do we love the most?

Crossword games, on paper or in digital format, have been popular for decades. Supposedly untranslatable words spark discussions on social media. And a simple online game called “Wordle” starts a proper frenzy around the world. Without a shadow of a doubt: people love words. No wonder then that many countries love to declare a “word of the year”. Sometimes, a jury picks the winner. In other cases, the favourite is chosen through a people’s vote. Such competitions exist in Denmark and in Portugal, in the Netherlands and in Spain. Belgians get to pick both a “woord van het jaar” and “le mot de l’année”. The Japanese pick a “kanji of the year”. And dictionary publishers in the English-speaking world give us a whole host of noteworthy words year after year.

Rather surprisingly, however, famously language-obsessed France hasn’t held a competition in a while. Even more surprising, there is a country that is not necessarily known for its love of language, but that seems to have more annual word competitions than any other: Germany. Nobody’s quite sure when it all started, but the Germans have been at it for at least a couple of decades. The country does not have an equivalent to the Académie Fran?aise or the Réal Academía, but various organisations pick their annual favourite: Word of the year, youth word of the year, anglicism of the year… the list goes on.

In his 1880 essay “The Awful German Language”, Mark Twain quipped: “An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity … it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary.” It would appear that even over 140 years ago, Germans had a bit of an obsession with new and noteworthy words.

In fact, they even pick an “un-word” of the year! What is an “un-word”, you ask? Well, Germans famously love order and structure. Everything that doesn’t fit sticks out like a sore thumb. An “Unding” (literally a “non-thing”) is something that makes Germans tut and shake their head in disbelief. When someone has an “Unart” (roughly: “non-manner”), they exhibit a bad habit or tick.

And then there’s the “Unwort”: a word that’s simply not right. Since 1991, German linguists and journalists have been pointing a spotlight on discriminatory language, evil euphemisms and antidemocratic coinages. In doing so, they criticise lazy or bad use of words and raise awareness for the power of language in public discourse. Examples from recent years include “coronavirus dictatorship”, “climate hysteria” or “gender mania”. You can probably guess what each of those words is about.

Some words just embody the zeitgeist. Crowning them “word of the year” is a good way to capture what held people’s attention at a given point in time. Looking back, we can see how far public discourse has come.