Now that it’s November, we’re in that season in which some of us get inordinately giddy. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, post-Daylight Saving Time? Nah. Word nerds know it’s the time dictionaries and other collections of word nerds release their words of the year.

I have palpitations just thinking about it. Though maybe that was the okra. Nah. Okra wouldn’t dare do that to me … the cornbread, on the other hand …

Cambridge Dictionary was first out of the gate Monday with its 2019 Word of the Year: upcycling. Upcycling, defined as “the activity of making new furniture, objects, etc., out of old or used things or waste material,” received more likes than any other Word of the Day on the dictionary’s Instagram page, @CambridgeWords.

“We think that our fans resonated with upcycling not as a word in itself but with the positive idea behind it,” said the dictionary’s blog. “Stopping the progression of climate change, let alone reversing it, can seem impossible at times. Upcycling is a concrete action a single human being can take to make a difference.”

Children and grandchildren of those who grew up during the Great Depression are very familiar with this. Crates and shop displays gained new life as furniture.

My personal favorite at Nanny and Grandpa’s house was a wooden Clark thread spool cabinet used as a nightstand. (Pretty sure it was just Clark. Clark Thread Co. and J. & P. Coats didn’t merge till 1952, and I don’t recall seeing “Coats” on it.) My oldest brother and I have no idea what happened to it, but I’d love to see it again. Today’s metal and plastic cabinets at fabric and craft stores just don’t compare.

Smaller things got even more use. Margarine bowls (especially the ones with no label printed on the bowl) became catch-alls for buttons and other small bits of stuff … you don’t want to know how many we’ve found squirreled away at Nanny and Grandpa’s house. Jelly jars became glasses (I think I was in college when I got my first actual glass tumblers). And coffee cans, either as is or spruced up with découpage, paint or whatever suited one’s fancy, became everything from holders of pencils or nails and screws to carriers for worms or minnows on a fishing trip.

 

Now a new generation is getting in on the act, though for reasons different than my grandparents’ generation. We’ve become a disposable society, with planned obsolescence and products made for single use or of quality that doesn’t last. Our landfills quickly fill up, and toxic rotting waste and non-biodegradable products like plastic bottles end up where they shouldn’t be—not just on the side of the road, but in the oceans and groundwater, and even in animals.

My grandparents “upcycled” because they had lived through the Depression and the poverty that came with it. Now we have too much stuff. Maybe we should take a cue from them. Of course, they never made clothes out of shredded plastic bottles. Not that Nanny wouldn’t have tried if she could.

In the coming weeks, other entities will announce their own words of the year. Collins English Dictionary (whose Word of the Year last year, coincidentally, was “single-use”) has named one since its first in 2013: geek. Oxford Dictionaries has picked a prominent or notable Word of the Year since 2004 (sometimes the same in the U.K. and U.S., sometimes not), though in 2015, it wasn’t a word at all; it was the emoji face with tears of joy (scandal!). Merriam-Webster has done it since 2003, relying on word searches, webpage hits and reader suggestions. Often, that means that the word ultimately chosen captures the zeitgeist of the year; in 2008, it was “bailout,” and in 2018, it was “justice.” I have a feeling words like “impeachment” and “quid pro quo” are in the running for 2019. Who’s with me?

The American Dialect Society (ADS) usually releases its Word of the Year just after the beginning of the new year, and takes nominations all year long from website visitors. Past honorees include “dumpster fire,” “hashtag,” and “fake news,” which has made more than a few lists in the past few years. It’s almost like there’s a reason for that …

I look forward to all those lists, but the one that most years makes my heart skip a beat—mainly because of laughter—is the Lake Superior State University List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. Like ADS, nominations are taken all year long, and the list is published around the end of the year (usually just before or on New Year’s Day).

This year, I have hopes for a few words being banished that one might not think of. “Wow,” “boom” and “bingo”—usually in all caps with no comment other than saying someone of like mind is right, or sharing a link to something they think is earth-shattering but usually isn’t—have been used to death by assorted Internet trolls, so much so that I, and probably a lot of other people, just scroll on past them … after rolling my eyes, of course.

Sometimes that’s the only real exercise I get since I try not to run amok or leap to conclusions.

---

A longtime reader from the paper (and the former boss of a former neighbor back home) recently sent me the name of a “word of the day” purveyor I somehow didn’t know about (Word Genius, at wordgenius.com), which made me want to share some others that have email newsletters I subscribe to (and yes, I signed up for Word Genius):

📚 A.Word.A.Day by Anu Garg is one of the best, and you can sign up for its emails here.

📚 Merriam-Webster’s Twitter page isn’t the only place for logophile fun, and you can read its blog and sign up for emails here.

📚 Oxford English Dictionary also sends out a word of the day, and you can sign up here.

📚 TheFreeDictionary also has a word of the day email which usually includes an idiom as well (the idiom finder on its page is a favorite of mine), and you can sign up here.

There are many others, but these make this word nerd very happy … when not irritating me with words that make me cringe. Among other sites you may want to check out that have email newsletters are Dictionary.com, Wordnik, WordThink, and the Online Slang Dictionary. Several others offer a word of the day, but you have to visit the site. Let me know what other such sites you’ve found in the comments below.

Do you have words you absolutely loved or loathed this year? Let me know. I have to annoy the non-word nerds somehow.

I mean, other than my mere existence. Apparently that’s a high insult to some of these guys.