By Mayank Chhaya –
Rizz is not something one acquires. Either one has rizz or one doesn’t. Those who have some rizz would understand what this word is; a word which is Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year.
It is derived from charisma by taking ris from it and jazzing it up up with two Zs. Charisma has been rizzed up in a manner of speaking. It means “style, charm or attractiveness,” or “the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”.
According to Oxford, Rizz was first known in 2022. However, it went viral in June courtesy of the actor Tom Holland[Above photo]. In an interview with Buzzfeed, he said: “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz.” Some nitpicking is in order here. If one has “no rizz whatsoever” one cannot have it is any measure at all, none, not even “limited rizz.”
Some 30,000 people voted to refine the selection into a shortlist of eight words “all chosen to reflect the mood, ethos, or preoccupations of the past year, and put them to the public to vote for their favorites.”
Through head-to-head competitions over a four-day voting period, the public narrowed down the shortlist of worthy contenders to four finalists: rizz, Swiftie, prompt, and situationship. “These words were then put to our language experts, who considered our corpus data, the vote counts, and the public commentary around the words to choose the definitive word of the year for 2023,” Oxford said.
“Our language experts chose rizz as an interesting example of how language can be formed, shaped, and shared within communities, before being picked up more widely in society. It speaks to how younger generations now have spaces, online or otherwise, to own and define the language they use. From activism to dating and wider culture, as Gen Z comes to have more impact on society, differences in perspectives and lifestyle play out in language, too,” Oxford said.
Swiftie, of course, is for the fans of Taylor Swift. Prompt is a product of the rise of artificial intelligence as in prompts given to AI. Situationship is a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.
Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages, said of the choice of rizz, “It has been incredible to see the public once again enjoying being a part of the Word of the Year selection. Seeing thousands of people debate and discuss language like this really highlights the power it has in helping us to understand who we are, and process what’s happening to the world around us.”
“Given that last year’s ‘goblin mode’ resonated with so many of us following the pandemic, it’s interesting to see a contrasting word like rizz come to the forefront, perhaps speaking to a prevailing mood of 2023 where more of us are opening ourselves up after a challenging few years and finding confidence in who we are,” he said.
“Rizz is a term that has boomed on social media and speaks to how language that enjoys intense popularity and currency within particular social communities—and even in some cases lose their popularity and become passé—can bleed into the mainstream. This is a story as old as language itself, but stories of linguistic evolution and expansion that used to take years can now take weeks or months. The spike in usage data for rizz goes to prove that words and phrases that evolve from internet culture are increasingly becoming part of day-to-day vernacular and will continue to shape language trends in the future,” Grathwohl said.
[Photo courtesy:https://www.linkedin.com/in/casper-grathwohl-586a285/]