‘Climate strike’ named 2019 word of the year by Collins Dictionary

Reflecting increasingly politicised language, this year’s contenders also included ‘rewilding’ and ‘hopepunk’

In a year when global protests over the climate crisis were staged from Afghanistan to Vietnam, Extinction Rebellion demonstrations stopped traffic in major cities and Greta Thunberg called for young people to skip school to fight political inaction, “climate strike” has been named Collins Dictionary’s 2019 word of the year.

Each year, the dictionary’s lexicographers monitor a 9.5bn word corpus and make a list of 10 new and notable terms. One of these is crowned the word of the year. Climate strike’s definition is “a form of protest in which people absent themselves from education or work in order to join demonstrations demanding action to counter climate change.”

climate strike (noun): a form of protest in which people absent themselves from education or work in order to join demonstrations demanding action to counter climate change.

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