密歇根新闻广播 美国方言协会选举年度词汇

On this week's edition of That's What They Say, English professor Anne Curzan joined us from Austin, Texas, where she was attending the American Dialect Society's annual meeting. 

Each year, the ADS gathers to choose a word that best represents "the public discourse¹ and preoccupations of the past year."

This year's candidates included "woke", "post-truth" and "normalize." But the ADS decided² it couldn't pick just one word to represent 2016, so the winner ended up being a compound.

A burning, smelly compound.

Yep, the word of the year for 2016 is "dumpster fire."

In case you're unaware³, a "dumpster fire" refers to an "exceedingly disastrous⁴ or chaotic⁵ situation." Curzan says she saw it pop up quite a bit in news articles from the end of the year.

"People were saying things like, '2016 was, simply put, a dumpster fire.' People were talking about the many wonderful people who died, this election we went through, Brexit, Syria, all these things that were happening in 2016," Curzan said.

"Dumpster fire" was just one of this year's picks. To hear about the winners for other categories including slang word of the year, WTF word of the year and most creative word of the year, listen to the full conversation above.

1 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 unaware   

a.不知道的，未意识到的

参考例句：

• They were unaware that war was near. 他们不知道战争即将爆发。
• I was unaware of the man's presence. 我没有察觉到那人在场。

4 disastrous   

adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的

参考例句：

• The heavy rainstorm caused a disastrous flood.暴雨成灾。
• Her investment had disastrous consequences.She lost everything she owned.她的投资结果很惨，血本无归。

5 chaotic   

adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的

参考例句：

• Things have been getting chaotic in the office recently.最近办公室的情况越来越乱了。
• The traffic in the city was chaotic.这城市的交通糟透了。