You’ll never order a milkshake duck at an ice cream parlor
Australia’s dictionary of record, its very own Merriam-Webster, has declared its word of the year, and boy, does it need an explanation.
Macquarie Dictionary’s word of 2017, just announced in mid-January, is “milkshake duck,” a term defined as “a person who is initially viewed positively by the media but is then discovered to have something questionable about them which causes a sharp decline in their popularity.” The term originated in a 2016 tweet by @PixelatedBoat.
https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/741904787361300481
The dictionary convened a committee to decide which word would get this honor, and they had to choose between portmanteaus like “framily” and “plandid” and other terms like “poke” and “subtweet.”
“Milkshake duck stood out as being a much needed term to describe something we are seeing more and more of, not just on the internet but now across all types of media. It plays to the simultaneous desire to bring someone down and the hope that they won’t be brought down,” the committee wrote in their decision.
So that’s the story of how the word of last year came to be from the year prior and announcing it this year just goes to show that.
Here are other lessons of the past year.
More dining definitions
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