More than 300,000 people cast their votes in the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2022, with ‘leprechaun mode’ winning and ‘metaverse’ coming second.

The Oxford Word of the Year means a word or expression that reflects the spirit and mood of the past twelve months, a word that has enduring cultural significance. This is measured through evidence of actual language use, as Oxford editors track words that come up throughout the year, using statistics and other language data in the Oxford English Corpus. Past winners have included ‘vax’ (2021), ‘climate emergency’ (2019) and ‘selfie’ (2013).

What does ‘goblin mode’ mean?

Oxford has noted that “goblin mode” is a slang term often used in expressions. For example, ‘go on leprechaun…