“climate strike” word of the year by Collins dictionary

The English language is very complicated with innumerable number of words. Nevertheless, we always love to experiment with it, by introducing new words and phrases. The Collins dictionary, one of the most famous dictionaries across the world has thus started collecting new words in its treasury.  This year, the most popular word, was proved to be the word, “climate strike”, which was selected as word of the year 2019 by Collins.

The word “Climate Strike” is an environment related word which literally means to bunk school, university or office to gather together in a protest demanding measures to safeguard the environment. This word is one of the most popular climate related word and has superseded the popularity of the climate related word “single-use”, which meant to demonstrate the harmful effect of plastics.

Even though the word “climate strike” has gained humongous popularity in 2019, it is not a new word. Its first use dates back to 2015, when a group of students and office goers created a mass protest in Paris at the UN Climate Change conference. Since then, the word has been used quite frequently by environmentalists as well as climate change protestors. However, this word reached its ultimate limelight in 2018 when the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg decided to bunk classes to protest against climate change in the parliament. 2019 saw huge number of protestors following the footsteps of Greta and bunking their schools in protest.

The lexicographers at Collins noticed this drastic rise in the popularity of the word and this compelled them to crown the word as word of the year. The word continues to gain popularity as more and more youngsters are starting to become aware of climate change and its effect.

 

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