Is it brat to not pick “brat” as the word of the year?
Cambridge Dictionary has named “manifest” as 2024’s word of the year thanks, in part, to its usage by Dua Lipa. The pop star has attributed her success, including releasing a chart-topping album and headlining Glastonbury Festival, to manifesting. She told Time, “Manifesting is a big thing for me. I stand very firmly in the belief of putting things into the world. Subconsciously, you just work towards them. Nothing’s ever too big.”
Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager Wendalyn Nichols told The Guardian that “manifest” has “increased notably in lookups” this year, with over 130,000 searches on the dictionary’s website. “Its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time,” she added. The word is derived from French and Latin and was used by poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300s in its “adjectival sense meaning clear or obvious.”
The official Cambridge definition of “manifest” is “to show something clearly, through signs or actions,” or alternately, “to use methods such as visualization and affirmation to help you imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen.” It’s also a popular Netflix show.
