Here's how Oxford zeroes in on its word of the year as people vote for 2022

OUP has shortlisted three words for this year: metaverse, #Istandwith and Goblin Mode

How do you sum up an entire year in a single word? Well, the Oxford University Press (OUP) believes it can be done. After all, it has been doing so every year since 2004 through its “Word of the Year”. It did make an exception, though, in 2020 when it noted that the pandemic-riddled year “could not be summed up in one single Word of the Year”.

So far, OUP has been going solo in deciding the word of the year. This time, however, in a first, people of the world will vote to choose from OUP’s shortlist of three