The final days of the year offer a chance to look back on everything that's happened in our last revolution around the sun. We've looked at TV shows, books, and instances of faux-outrage; now here are some of the words and phrases that defined 2015. These aren't all new terms, by any means, but all of them played a significant role in some of the biggest stories of the year.
Anthropocene
"Anthropocene" is a term first coined in 2000 to describe what scientists believe is a completely new geological epoch caused by humans' drastic alteration of the planet. While enough people still decry human-caused climate change that the Associated Press coined the new term "climate change doubter" to avoid displeasing them, the scientific consensus is that real action needs to be taken to address the warming of the planet.
Thus, this year brought us a historic climate agreement hammered out in Paris and approved by 195 countries to stay below the agreed-upon 2°C global warming threshold.
Of course, this year also saw the massive Volkswagen "clean diesel" scandal, disastrous forest fires in Indonesia, and an unusually strong El Niño that combined with rising sea surface temperatures to bring about record-breaking high temperatures and weather events.
Emoji
The Oxford Dictionary attracted no small amount of ridicule last month when it announced its word of the year was not actually a word but rather an emoji: the "face with tears of joy" emoji, to be precise.
Still, it makes a kind of sense — after all, 2015 was the year that introduced tons of new emoji to iOS, including the long-awaited taco and middle finger symbols, as well as the option to choose from various skin tones. The Telegraph even asked earlier this year whether emoji are killing off the tradition of internet slang, serving as universal shorthand for any number of expressions.
But by far the most important emoji development of 2015 was, of course, the advent of the emoji celebrity birth announcement, unleashed upon the world by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West:
SAINT WEST pic.twitter.com/xZGpY7z8KW
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) December 7, 2015
-ism
Another non-word word of the year, this time from Merriam Webster. The dictionary chose the suffix as word of the year due to spikes in searches for words like feminism and capitalism, as well as uglier terms like racism and terrorism, driven by major news stories of the year like the police killings of African Americans and the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
Presidential campaigns drove other -ism searches, including socialism, via democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, and fascism via Donald Trump, whose unique form of bombast and unexpected reign atop Republican polls has given rise to his own neologism: Trumpism.
Misandry
Hollywood is far from equal when it comes to representation of men and women (let alone racial and other minorities), but this year saw some very high-profile examples of women fighting the status quo. Oscar winners Jennifer Lawrence and Patricia Arquette, among others, stood up for equal pay; women superheroes finally got their own shows in Jessica Jones and Supergirl; and one of the summer's biggest hits, Mad Max: Fury Road, saw a powerhouse Charlize Theron completely steal the movie from the titular character. The patriarchy, then, became a villain in its own right.
2015's by-far biggest villain: MALE PRIVILEGE. #ExMachina #MadMaxFuryRoad #UnbreakableKimmySchmidt #JessicaJones pic.twitter.com/ngh9ZDzC3A
— max im a koopa (@meakoopa) December 22, 2015
But this year also saw high-profile allegations of repeated sexual abuse (see: Bill Cosby, James Deen), angry backlash against successful women (e.g., the controversy over Serena Williams as Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year), and a desire to police women's bodies evidenced by a large increase in abortion restrictions at the state level. Women — and some men — may be pushing back against discrimination, but there's still a long way to go to anything resembling equality.
Mx
With marriage equality now the law of the land, LGBTQ activists turned their attention to the next threshold of the fight: trans awareness issues. On one side of the debate was Caitlyn Jenner making history as the first trans woman on the cover of Vanity Fair, and shows such as Transparent offering deeply nuanced portrayals of trans characters. On the other was everybody stoking the fire of the "bathroom wars," with bills being proposed that would make it illegal for transgender people to use the restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
This year the Oxford English Dictionaries added "mx" (pronounced like "mix") as a gender-neutral pronoun. OED defines it as "a title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female." In a similar vein, the Washington Post announced it would accept "the singular they as the only sensible solution to English's lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun" (which, for the record, Vox does as well).
Nostalgia
What's the difference between a reboot, a remake, and a reimagining? It's a question moviegoers have been forced to contemplate as Hollywood continues its cash-grabbing tradition of churning out "new" offerings that play off fans' nostalgia. Eight of the 10 highest-grossing movies this year were either installments of franchises (Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Fast & Furious, Mission: Impossible, Avengers, Jurassic World), spinoffs (Minions), or well-trod fairy-tale territory (Cinderella).
Though these movies have made huge amounts of cash, they've also sparked a conversation about Hollywood's nostalgia problem: its habit of endlessly reworking the same formulas with gender flips and other minor tweaks, a recipe for creative burnout and audience boredom. Some revisits of known properties, like Terminator: Genisys and Vacation, garnered miserable reviews; others, including Star Wars, were criticized for too closely aping the original. While that might make sense from a profit-making perspective, it also risks diminishing returns.
As Peter Suderman wrote for Vox:
Pop culture nostalgia isn’t just a feeling — it’s a business strategy. And as the mammoth box office returns for both Jurassic World and The Force Awakens suggest, when it’s executed reasonably well, the payoffs can be huge. But while it’s understandable, it’s also disappointing for fans who want something new, not just more of the same.
Political correctness
This summer, Vox published a first-person essay called, "I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me." Written by a teacher at a midsize state university, it described how a "climate of fear" has taken over higher education via coddled students who lodge formal complaints if their delicate feelings are hurt in any way by the curricula. The story struck a nerve, becoming one of Vox's top three posts of the year.
Even President Obama came out against what he called the "new political correctness" on campuses, admonishing students in a September town hall meeting that "that's not the way we learn." With terms like "microaggression" and "trigger warning" on the rise, some have tried to turn political correctness into a dirty word. A notable example: Donald Trump, who when asked by moderator Megyn Kelly in the first Republican debate about his insulting, sexist comments about women shot back, "I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either."
But as Vox's Amanda Taub has written, "The truth is that accusations of 'political correctness' are a sort of catchall charge that's used against people who ask for more sensitivity to a particular cause than someone else is willing to give — a way to dismiss issues as frivolous in order to justify ignoring them."
Refugee
The concept of refugees is not new, obviously, but it was driven to the forefront of global conversation this year in part due to the rise of ISIS and the Syrian civil war, which sent record numbers of people fleeing from their home countries, making dangerous and often deadly attempts to escape to Europe and other places.
Despite wrenching viral images like the body of a Syrian toddler washed up on a beach, the US has barely taken in any refugees, and growing xenophobia and Islamophobia have caused opportunistic political candidates to call for decreasing even that low number to zero.
Streaming wars
November 20 gave us the first streaming TV blockbuster battle, as Netflix and Amazon debuted two highly anticipated shows — Jessica Jones and The Man in the High Castle, respectively — on the same day. Instant video's increasing dominance showed itself in the Golden Globe nominations, too, where Netflix picked up nine nominations — the most of any network.
But perhaps more contentious than the competition among television providers is streaming music platforms' battle for market share. Both Tidal and Apple Music launched in 2015, and while neither has close to Spotify's number of users yet, both have garnered endorsements from big-name artists, who say the services compensate musicians more fairly for their work.
Still, as of Christmas Eve, all the platforms have something in common: You can now finally find the Beatles' music on all major streaming services.
Thoughts and prayers
As has been well-documented, 2015 has the terrible distinction of having more days with mass shootings in the US than without.
And while each incident highlighted America's unparalleled levels of gun violence, the year brought about little actual policy change. Frustration grew as politicians on both sides of the aisle lined up to spout the same pat "thoughts and prayers" line after every horrific shooting. It's tragic proof that we've come to accept the massive number of gun deaths in the US as routine.