Cli-Fi Gets Honorable Word of the Year Mention

When I first heard the word cli-fi, climate change was not what I thought of. Even so, Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has announced cli-fi -- which is “the genre of speculative fiction based on the premise that climate change will give rise to fundamental changes in the way human beings live” -- was given an honorable word of the year mention. The big winner for 2013 was infovore: 

The Committee thought that the coinage infovore was a response to the perception that we now had access to information all the time. The smart phone made it possible to find out immediately what we wanted to know. For some people knowing that whatever questions life threw at us the answer was a click or two away was a liberating experience.  Indeed they were in danger of becoming addicted to this rush of instant information.  This was a word that reflected a significant change in how we conducted our lives.  It was also a neat coinage.

Here are the word of the year finalists in each category:

• Agriculture - dining boom
• Arts - fanfic
• Business - showrooming
• Colloquial - facepalm
• Communications - churnalism
• Eating and Drinking - coffee cupping
• Environment - firescape
• Fashion - onesie
• General Interest - watch and act
• Health - enabler
• Internet - Streisand effect
• Politics - marriage equality
• Social Interest - generation debt
• Sport - barefoot running
• Technology - dumb phone