“Metaverse” has come in second to “goblin mode” as Oxford University Press’s 2022 word of the year after the process was opened to voters for the first time.

In a December 4 announcement, Oxford Languages ​​said the viral term “goblin mode” surpassed “metaverse” and #IStandWith to become its word of the year for 2022. According to Oxford research, use of the term metaverse ” increased nearly four times over the previous year in the Oxford Corpus,” driven in part by Facebook’s rebranding to Meta in October 2021.

The Metaverse lost out to Goblin Mode, which went viral in February as it apparently “captured the prevailing mood of people who rejected the idea of ​​going back to ‘normal life'” after the COVID lockdowns were lifted. 19 in many areas. #I am with…