They Say “They” is the 2015 Word of the Year
The American Dialect Society chose the singular form of “they” as the word of 2015.
What’s in a word? The annual list of banished words for the year from Lake Superior State University in the U.P. featured a single word – “So” – at the beginning of a thought or sentence as being particularly offensive. And now another controversial single word has been chosen as the Word of the Year by linguists with the American Dialect Society. The word of 2015 is “they” in the singular form. As in, “If an employee is unhappy, they should talk to their supervisor.” Linguist and professor Anne Curzan of the University of Michigan joins Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson to discuss the choice of “they” in the singular form.
