Xenophobia: Why It Became Dictionary.com 2016 Word Of The Year

Xenophobia has been selected to be Dictionary.com's Word of the Year for 2016. Dictionary.com reportedly picked the 2016 Word of the Year based on the "cultural consciousness" of users in the past 12 months. The year 2016 apparently saw a rise in fear of the other among people and the search for the word xenophobia has also increased.

Xenophobia means "fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers" as per Dictionary.com. It is derived from two Greek words xenos and phobos. Xenos means stranger or guest in English while phobos means fear or panic.

Xenophobia can also be used to refer to "fear or dislike of customs, dress, and cultures of people with backgrounds different from our own." It is said to be a relatively new word and was only added in the English language during the late 1800s.

In the past months, there was a surge in xenophobia lookups from Dictionary.com worldwide. The most significant spike was recorded on June 24 this year which reached a 93.8 percent increase in lookups as per Dictionary.com blog post. That reflects hundreds of users looking up the term on Dictionary.com at the same time in a given hour.

The rise in xenophobia lookups followed Brexit, the day when the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union. The second biggest spike of xenophobia lookups happened during the 2016 U.S. presidential race when President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Donald Trump.

In the speech, President Obama used the term xenophobia to refer to Trump's political rhetoric. That said, the highest peak in xenophobia lookups was recorded on June 30 following the president's speech.

Meanwhile, Oxford Dictionaries has already announced their Word of the Year earlier this month. Oxford Dictionaries nominated post-truth as their 2016 Word of the Year. Post-truth is defined as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

Oxford Dictionaries reportedly saw that the percentage of the word usage has escalated by 2,000 in 2016. The result was based on how people use the English language. Oxford even revealed that "post-truth politics" became a popular phrase recently, Time reported.

Have you searched for the word xenophobia in the past? Do you also think that people's fear about Brexit and the U.S. Presidential campaign caused the spike in xenophobia lookup? Let us know your thoughts in our comment section below.