As we race toward the end of the year it’s time to look at the final two Words of the Year and get off the WOTY hamster wheel for 2024. These last two words were recently released by the lexicographers at the Oxford University Press and their counterparts at Merriam-Webster.

First up is “brain rot,” which is this year’s selection as voted by the readers of the Oxford English Dictionary. The word (term?) beat out the tome’s five other shortlisters, receiving a plurality of the 37,000 votes cast by the public over a recent two-week period.

According to the OED, brain rot is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: Something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”

The first recorded use of “brain rot” was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book “Walden,” in which he criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas in favor of simple ones. It’s this fact that prompted Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl to observe: “I find it fascinating that the term ‘brain rot’ has been adopted by Gen Z and Gen Alpha, those communities largely responsible for the use and creation of the digital content the term refers to.”

Two other words on Oxford’s shortlist — “demure” (which was Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year), and “slop” (low-quality material produced using a large-language model) — prompted Grathwohl to observe: “You can see society’s growing preoccupation with how our virtual lives are evolving, the way internet culture is permeating so much of who we are and what we talk about.”

On the other hand, the folks at Merriam-Webster chose “polarization” as their Word of the Year based on data such as a rise in searches for the word and its usage.

One definition of polarization pertains to electricity and is “the point of differentiation between positive and negative charges in a material.” Another scientific meaning: A “polar opposite is the diametrically opposite point of a circle or sphere. It is mathematically known as an antipodal point, or antipode when referring to the Earth.”

But it’s the word’s most commonly used definition — “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings” — that made the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster go with “polarization” as their selection. “Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, told The Associated Press.

“Polarization means that we are tending toward extremes rather than toward the center,” said Sokolowski, explaining that it “extends beyond political connotations. It’s used to highlight fresh cracks and deep rifts alike in pop culture, tech trends and other industries.”

Interestingly most of the words on Merriam-Webster’s shortlist of WOTY candidates do not depend on the internet culture that Oxford Languages’ Grathwohl talks about.

Among the words on Webster’s shortlist were: “Fortnight (two weeks) probably due to the popularity of the Taylor Swift song featuring rapper Post Malone; “allision” (when a moving object runs into a fixed one); “weird” (strange), which became a political word for a while, and “pander” (provide what someone wants even if it’s not good or reasonable).

That’s enough pandering for this week so I’ll end this weird column.

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at [email protected].