Xenophobia Is The Word Of The Year

Our business is words on the morning news.  The challenge is always to find just the right word to convey exactly what we mean.  It’s easy to overshoot and it’s easy to under deliver. I used to tell young TV reporters that if they had the time and a big enough vocabulary they would find the “inevitable word”, that one word says it all, no more no less.

Needless to say we think words are very important so we were interested to note that USA Today is reporting that Dictionary.com has declared "xenophobia" the word of the year.

The site said in a statement that the Brexit vote, Syria's refugee crisis, the U.S. presidential election and police shootings drove up the number of users looking up the word in 2016.

Dictionary.com defines "xenophobia" as, “fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers." (USA Today)