Omishambles is simply just a passing phrase
It is a post-truth universally acknowledged that a simples man in possession of a squeezed middle must be trying hard to use every new word or phrase from the past decade.
Unfortunately, that man would be in limited company. Analysis shows most buzzwords fall out of favour almost as quickly as they find it.
Selfie, omnishambles, youthquake, simples, post-truth and big society have all been named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, since 2009. Such glory is not always reflected by longevity in the English lexicon, it seems.
Figures seen by The Times suggest that popular phrases swiftly become passe.
Selfie, the word of the year in 2013, has enjoyed the greatest sticking power but even that may now be on the way out because taking such photos has become so ubiquitous it is no longer commented upon or needs labelling.
In 2014 the word ‘‘selfie’’ was mentioned 109 million times on Twitter but its use fell by 75 per cent in three years, with only 27 million mentions last year.
Pulsar, a social data company, looked at the rise and fall of the words of the year on Twitter over nine years.
It was unable to include the crying with laughter emoji, the 2015 winner.
Simples, inspired by an insurance advert, was the 2009 word and ‘‘big society’’ topped in 2010.
The latter’s use rose to 152,000 mentions in 2011 but fell to 50,000 by 2014 and 16,000 last year.
Squeezed middle, phrase of 2011, fell from 29,000 uses in 2012 to 7000 last year. Omnishambles, word of 2012, also fell but came back last year with its highest number of uses.
Post-truth was the word of 2016 and grew in popularity last year but its use has since slipped.
Francesco D’Orazio of Pulsar said: ‘‘The research shows that most ‘words of the year’ don’t achieve cultural relevance and when they do they have an expiry date.
‘‘They encapsulate a cultural moment in time, but provide little relevance to society in the long term.
‘‘Where ‘selfie’ differs, is that it taps into the narcissism inherent in all humans; our self-obsession has made the selfie so mainstream that we no longer feel the need to label or talk about them."