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WORD OF THE YEAR 2022: WELTERED 57%

(v., adj.) exhausted by constant turmoil

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Picking up a whopping 57% of the vote in this year’s poll, the 2022 Haggard Hawks Word of the  Year is weltered—meaning exhausted by constant turmoil. 

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Last year, the HH Word of the Year was overmused, defined as ‘worn out from overthinking’. It was an apt choice given the turmoil of the early 2020s, and in 2022 that turmoil certainly didn’t abate. War, politics, economic worries, climate crises, strikes, protests, political upheaval, and a shambolic Twitter takeover—it was all one thing after another. So we perhaps shouldn’t have been too surprised that this word topped your poll. 

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As a verb, to welter means either to toss and to turn, or else to be tossed and turned, subjected to upsets and misfortunes, and knocked, rolled, swayed, and agitated by constant motion and upheaval. Ultimately, anyone feeling weltered at the end of 2022 was feeling the effects of near constant upset, unrest, and turmoil. 

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“This book will delight logophiles everywhere, and create many new ones.”
JOHN BANVILLE
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THE SHORTLIST

grasshoppering 19%

(v., adj.) failing to adequately prepare for the future; descriptive of just such a failure
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novaturient 13%

(adj.) desiring of change

 

kedophysis 6%

(n.) an inclination to worry

 

climacter 5%

(n.) a critically important period of time, with significant or far-reaching future implications
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​The rest of this year’s shortlist consisted of words referring to worry for the future, a lack of preparation for the future, and change in light of the future (or else a lack thereof). Picking up just under one-fifth of the votes, this year’s silver medal went to grasshoppering, an unusual term used both as a verb and adjective to describe frivolous time-wasting, or the practice of living in a wasteful manner while failing to prepare for the future. The term derives from Aesop’s fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper, in which a grasshopper idles away the summer months singing and dancing, while the nearby ants spend their time storing food for winter. When the winter arrives, the starving grasshopper begs for food from the ants but is refused—with one ant telling him to dance away the winter just as he did the summer. 

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