The Dictionary.com Word of the Year is hallucinate.

Dictionary.com ^ | December 12, 2023 | Nick Norlen, Senior Editor, and Grant Barrett, Head of Lexicography

[DoodleBob]

When we look back on 2023 from whatever surreal future it forks into, we’ll remember it as the year that at least this much became clear: AI will forever change how we work, learn, create, interact with (mis)information, and think about ourselves.

To determine the 2023 Word of the Year, we, the humans here at Dictionary.com, gave ourselves a prompt: Using lexicography and data science, choose a single word that best represents, at this moment, AI’s many profound ramifications for the future of language and life.

Like the output of many prompts, the result may not be what you were expecting.

The Dictionary.com Word of the Year is hallucinate.

hallucinate [ huh-loo-suh-neyt ] (of artificial intelligence) to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual. verb Example: When chatbots hallucinate, the result is often not just inaccurate but completely fabricated.

Why we chose hallucinate as our 2023 Word of the Year

We added this sense of hallucinate to our dictionary just this year. If this is the first time you’re learning about it, be prepared to start encountering the word—and what it refers to—with increasing frequency. Like AI itself, the word hallucinate is on an upward trajectory

[DoodleBob]

Also on their shortlist was wokeism

The evolution of woke and related terms like wokeism continues, with wokeism in particular emerging as a lightning rod and signifier of broad political opposition. We saw a massive 2,300% increase in pageviews for wokeism in 2023.

[ClearCase_guy]

The choice of this word really has me thinking about the message that’s being sent.

[monkeyshine]

I think those tech people don’t know how to measure a microdose.

[Altura Ct.]

‘Hallucinate’

As in - I hallucinate that Brandon is a great president.