There’s a danger in writing my column early at this time of year.

Usually I write it on Monday afternoon (or morning, if I happen to finish pages before noon), then re-edit it Tuesday to put it on the page for Wednesday. The last month or so, though, I’ve had afternoon appointments each Monday, so I’ve been writing on Sunday. Last week, in addition to that Monday appointment, I also took the day off Tuesday (for my annual boob-smasherie appointment; schedule yours if you haven’t already, ladies!), which meant that the Wednesday page was done Monday before I left for my appointment. All that to say: I missed two big word of the year announcements.

I know! How dare I!

And until I started working on this column, I thought I’d only missed one (many thanks to Susan Richards for alerting me to that). As I type this, I’m reading about Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year, but that will have to wait till next week. The life of a word nerd is way too busy sometimes. This week I take on Merriam-Webster’s pick.

This year’s word is “authentic,” which the dictionary says is “something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever. A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI [artificial intelligence], celebrity culture, identity, and social media.”

Yep, there’s AI again. I should have known.

“Authentic has a number of meanings including ‘not false or imitation,’ a synonym of real and actual; and also ‘true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,’” the dictionary wrote on its blog. “Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary. …

“[W]ith the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ has become increasingly blurred.”

Because politics apparently wasn’t doing enough to erase that line.

Editor at large Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement, “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity. What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

I’ve seen a lot of talk on Threads about being authentic, and I think that’s what’s been driving more people there recently, with so many of us less inclined to put on an act about who we are. That feeling may not last if more X/Twitter trolls and copy-and-pasters make their way over (most are finding engagement is not as easy if no one responds to their provocations and/or just blocks them or hides their responses so they’re screaming into the void), but for now, it’s a joy to see so much gorgeous photography, critters and people being themselves.

However, said the dictionary, “Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be. Elon Musk made headlines when he said that people should be more ‘authentic’ on social media. Apps and platforms like BeReal make recording ‘authentic’ experiences their main purpose. No matter how much artifice and calculation goes into the production of these videos, as Rebecca Jennings of Vox puts it, ‘wherever people are supposedly being authentic on the Internet, the money will follow.’ Ironically, with ‘authentic content creators’ now recognized as the gold standard for building trust, ‘authenticity’ has become a performance.”

So, as with so many things today, if someone describes themselves as “authentic,” they’re really not. If people can’t tell what kind of person you are by your actions, the way you describe yourself is meaningless.

“Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore,” Sokolowski told AP. “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

Speaking of inauthenticity, “deepfake” was among the runners-up this year, meaning “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” Elon Musk earlier this year had his lawyers argue that he shouldn’t have to give testimony about his public statements because, as a celebrity, they might be deepfakes (the judge didn’t buy that).

“Rizz” (slang word for romantic appeal or charm) also saw a spike in lookups this year (more on this next week), as did “coronation” (ceremony to crown a new monarch) around the time of King Charles III’s coronation earlier this year. Politics (RNC ad on another Joe Biden term), the environment (record heat, Canadian wildfires, etc.) and AI worries led to more lookups of “dystopian” (“of, relating to, or being an imagined world or society in which people lead dehumanized, fearful lives”). I’m a bit of a fan of dystopia in fiction, such as “The Last of Us,” but in real life, not so much, and we’ve been too close to “The Handmaid’s Tale” for too long in recent years.

Give me authentic ennui, whydoncha?

Other runners-up were “EGOT” (the term used for someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), which got a spike in February after Viola Davis won a Grammy for her audiobook reading of her autobiography, completing the EGOT for her; “X,” which spiked after the renaming of Twitter; “implode,” spiking after the Titan submersible, which was to visit the wreck of the Titanic, imploded (“submersible” was also a top lookup); “covenant,” spiking first after the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., and then releases of a movie and a book with the word in the titles, and finally after it was revealed that new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson uses the app Covenant Eyes to monitor his and his son’s website usage; “indict” (gosh, I have no idea whatsoever might have caused lookups to rise /s/); “elemental,” which spiked after the Disney/Pixar movie “Elemental” came out; “kibbutz” (I think we know the sad situation that led to lookups of this word; and “deadname,” the name given at birth but no longer used upon transitioning, which spiked after the introduction of “parents’ rights” bills in several states that would require schools to use the name given to students at birth.

One other word was a runner-up this time around: “doppelganger.” The dictionary wrote: “Media coverage of two crimes—one in Germany and one in New York, each involving the murder or attempted murder of someone’s lookalike—focused on the word. So did a story about two minor league baseball players who, despite sharing professions, names, and similar physical features (height, coloring, glasses), were shown via a DNA test to be unrelated. And September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, ‘Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.’

“Doppelgänger can refer to a living person that closely resembles another living person—that is, a double; or it can refer to the opposite side of one’s personality. In German folklore a Doppelgänger is a ghostly counterpart of a living person. The word is formed from two words that together mean ‘double goer.’”

I highlight this particular word not just because I loved the concept when I first found out about it when I was a kid, but because this past weekend I discovered that Boo the Warehouse Cat has a doppelganger who conned me out of food at least once. I should have known something was off when the double climbed on me and tried to get in the house (Boo is too polite to do that). I returned home Saturday after a day with new fur-nephew Ollie (and doing laundry) just in time to see the real Boo run after the encroacher, who he does not like.

Sorry, extra kitty, I don’t have much cat food, and what I have is earmarked for Boo.

🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼

Word of the year announcements aren’t the only thing that tend to run heavy at this time of the year; there are also holiday concerts and other events. Sunday I and friends Sarah and Sandra attended the River City Men’s Chorus’ “Holiday! 2023” concert and were again blown away by the talent on that stage. If you’re in the central Arkansas area, make plans to see the last performance at 7 p.m. Thursday at St. James United Methodist Church, 321 Pleasant Valley Drive in Little Rock.

The music is sure to lift your spirits, especially the opening and closing numbers (and hey, there are sing-alongs too; heck, I sang along to a lot of it even when it wasn’t a sing-along). Just, please, remember to silence your cellphone or at least put it on vibrate before the concert begins; concertgoers are there for authentic and gorgeous music, not your default ringtone (at least my default is “Manamana”!).

Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with your phone.