‘Climate Strike’ Named 2019 Word of the Year

• 11.07.2019, 17:48
•  World,  No-politics

In a year when global protests over the climate crisis were staged from Afghanistan to Vietnam, Extinction Rebellion demonstrations stopped traffic in major cities and Greta Thunberg called for young people to skip school to fight political inaction, “climate strike” has been named Collins Dictionary’s 2019 word of the year, the Guardian reports.

The first use of the expression was registered in 2015, when a mass demonstration took place during the UN climate change conference in Paris. However, the phrase only took off in late 2018, when the young Swedish activist Thunberg’s decision to skip school on Fridays in order to protest in front of the national parliament made headlines around the world. In September 2019, an estimated six million people joined the worldwide climate strike, also known as the Global Week for Future.

There were other climate-related contenders this year, including “rewilding”, meaning “the practice of returning areas of land to a wild state”, and “hopepunk”, a noun that has been used to describe “a literary and artistic movement that celebrates the pursuit of positive aims in the face of adversity”.