Word of the Year 2023
2023年度词汇

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is authentic—the term for something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever.
梅里亚姆-韦伯斯特2023年的年度词汇是“真实”——这个词汇是我们思考、写作、追求以及评判的对象，现在比以往任何时候都更多。

A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.
“真实”这个词在大多数年份中都是高频查找词汇，在2023年因为关于人工智能、名人文化、身份认同和社交媒体的故事和讨论而大幅增加。

Authentic has a number of meanings including “not false or imitation,” a synonym of real and actual; and also “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary.
“真实”有多种含义，包括“非虚假或仿造的”，是“真实”和“实际”的同义词；也表示“忠于自己的个性、精神或性格”。尽管显然是一种令人向往的品质，“真实”很难定义，也是一个有争议的话题——这两个原因促使许多人查阅字典。

Authentic is often connected to identity, whether national or personal: words frequently modified by authentic include cuisine and dish, but also self and voice. Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their “authentic voice” and “authentic self.” Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.
“真实性”常与身份联系在一起，无论是国家身份还是个人身份：经常与“真实”一词搭配的词汇包括“菜肴”和“菜品”，但也包括“自我”和“声音”。像莱尼·威尔逊、山姆·史密斯，尤其是泰勒·斯威夫特这样的名人在2023年都因为寻求他们的“真实声音”和“真实自我”的声明而成为头条新闻。像《三种方法挖掘泰勒·斯威夫特的真实性并建立一个类似时代的工作场所》这样的标题将这种品质与流行文化超能力联系起来。

And with the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred.
随着人工智能的兴起——以及它对深度伪造视频、演员合同、学术诚信以及其他许多话题的影响——“真实”与“假冒”的界限变得越来越模糊。

Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be. Elon Musk made headlines when he said that people should be more “authentic” on social media. Apps and platforms like BeReal make recording “authentic” experiences their main purpose. No matter how much artifice and calculation goes into the production of these videos, as Rebecca Jennings of Vox puts it, “wherever people are supposedly being ‘authentic’ on the internet, the money will follow.” Ironically, with “authentic content creators” now recognized as the gold standard for building trust, “authenticity” has become a performance.
品牌、社交媒体影响者和名人都渴望成为“真实”的。埃隆·马斯克在说到人们应该在社交媒体上更“真实”时成为了头条新闻。像BeReal这样的应用和平台将记录“真实”体验作为其主要目的。正如Vox的丽贝卡·詹宁斯所说，无论这些视频的制作过程中投入了多少人为设计和计算，“无论人们在互联网上所谓的‘真实’地方，金钱都会随之而来。”具有讽刺意味的是，现在“真实内容创作者”被认为是建立信任的黄金标准，“真实性”已经变成了一种表演。

Other words also stood out in the dictionary’s 2023 data, including:
字典2023年的数据中还有其他词汇脱颖而出，包括：

Rizz, an example of internet-driven slang, shot to the top of lookups when it was added to the dictionary in September.
里兹，一个由互联网推动的俚语，在九月被添加到字典时迅速成为搜索热词。

As a noun, rizz means “romantic appeal or charm” (as in “a bro who has rizz”); as a verb (typically used with up, as in “rizz up that cutie”) it means “to charm or seduce.” It’s frequently considered a play on charisma, but YouTuber Kai Cenat (shown above), widely credited with coining the word, says nah, that’s not what it’s from. No other lexical inspiration has been identified though.
作为名词，里兹意味着“浪漫的吸引力或魅力”（如“一个有里兹的哥们”）；作为动词（通常与up一起使用，如“给那个可爱的人增加里兹”）它意味着“魅惑或诱惑”。它经常被认为是charisma（魅力）的一个变体，但是被广泛认为是这个词的创造者的YouTuber Kai Cenat（上图所示）说不，它不是来自这个。尽管如此，没有其他词汇灵感被确认。

The quest for authenticity partly results from technologies like the deepfake: “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.”
对真实性的追求部分源于像深度伪造这样的技术：“一种图像或录音，已经被令人信服地改变和操纵，以误表示某人做了或说了实际上未曾做过或说过的事情。”

In late April and early May, we saw a surge of interest in deepfake when lawyers for Elon Musk argued that he shouldn’t have to give legal testimony about public statements he made, since, as a famous person, some of his statements might be deepfakes. (This argument was rejected by the judge.)
在四月下旬和五月初，我们看到对深度伪造技术的兴趣激增，当时埃隆·马斯克的律师辩称，他不应该因为他所发表的公开声明而必须提供法律证词，因为作为一个著名人物，他的一些声明可能是深度伪造的。（这一论点被法官驳回。）

Another spike for deepfake followed in May, when a fan-made ad for Tesla featured a likeness of Ryan Reynolds, and again in June, when online ads for Ron DeSantis used apparently fake images of Donald Trump.
五月份，当一位粉丝制作的特斯拉广告中出现了瑞安·雷诺兹的肖像时，对深度伪造技术的兴趣再次激增，六月份，当网上为罗恩·德桑蒂斯的广告使用了看似伪造的唐纳德·特朗普的图片时，兴趣又一次上升。

The ceremony to crown a new British monarch—Charles III—caused this term to spike in May.
五月份，为新的英国君主查尔斯三世举行的加冕仪式使这个词汇的搜索量激增。

Coronation refers to the literal act of placing a crown on a monarch’s head, a synonym of crowning. It is also more figuratively used to refer to the assumption of a prominent position or office, as in “the coronation of the league’s MVP.”
加冕指的是将王冠放在君主头上的字面行为，是加冕的同义词。它也更比喻地用来指担任一个突出的职位或办公室，如“联盟最有价值球员的加冕”。

Coronation comes from French, as do so many of the words associated with nobility and royalty, including noble, royal, monarch, and ceremony. These French words are used because the British aristocracy was originally the Norman (i.e., French) aristocracy following William the Conqueror’s victory in 1066. The word has been used in English since the 1300s.
加冕一词来源于法语，就像许多与贵族和皇室相关的词汇一样，包括贵族、皇家、君主和仪式。这些法语词汇之所以被使用，是因为英国贵族最初是诺曼（即法国）贵族，这是在1066年威廉征服者胜利之后的情况。这个词自1300年代以来就被用在英语中。

A number of events this year drove interest in dystopian. A video produced by the Republican National Committee in early April, and built entirely with AI-generated imagery, portrayed what was widely described as the “dystopian future” the RNC asserts will result from the reelection of Joe Biden. And the 54th Earth Day celebration on April 22nd, which followed weeks of record-high temperatures, came with warnings from activists that action must be taken to avoid a “dystopian future.” That future was evoked in June when smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed the eastern U.S. creating a “dystopian landscape.” And the year was full of dystopian warnings that AI could eventually replace or subjugate humankind.
今年的许多事件引发了对反乌托邦的兴趣。共和党全国委员会在四月初制作的一段视频，完全由人工智能生成的图像构建，描绘了被广泛描述为共和党全国委员会声称由于乔·拜登的连任将导致的“反乌托邦未来”。4月22日的第54个地球日庆祝活动在创纪录的高温数周后举行，活动家们警告说必须采取行动以避免“反乌托邦未来”。这个未来在六月被唤起，当时加拿大野火的烟雾笼罩了美国东部，创造了一个“反乌托邦景观”。而且这一年充满了关于人工智能最终可能取代或征服人类的反乌托邦警告。

Dystopian gets applied not only to frightening real-world issues, but also to entertaining fictional ones. Video games, books and movies depict a dark potential future that typifies the imagined world or society that dystopian so often calls to mind.
反乌托邦不仅被应用于令人恐惧的现实世界问题，还被应用于娱乐性的虚构问题。视频游戏、书籍和电影描绘了一个黑暗的潜在未来，这典型地体现了反乌托邦经常让人想到的想象世界或社会。

One of the rarest distinctions an entertainer can achieve is winning four particular awards: the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. This accomplishment is referred to by a word made up of the first letters of each award, the EGOT. EGOT was first used in 1984 and was added to our dictionary in 2019.
娱乐界人士能够获得的最稀有荣誉之一是赢得四个特定奖项：艾美奖、格莱美奖、奥斯卡奖和托尼奖。这一成就被称为EGOT，这个词是由每个奖项名称的首字母组成的。EGOT这个词最早在1984年被使用，并于2019年被添加到我们的词典中。

Lookups for EGOT spiked in February when Viola Davis won a Grammy for her reading of the audiobook version of her memoir, adding to the Emmy, Oscar, and Tony awards she had already received.
当维奥拉·戴维斯因为她的回忆录有声书版本赢得格莱美奖时，EGOT的搜索量在二月份激增，此前她已经获得了艾美奖、奥斯卡奖和托尼奖。

EGOT is pronounced as a word as /EE-gaht/ rather than by spelling out its letters. We heard Viola Davis pronounce it when she used EGOT as a verb in her acceptance speech at the Grammys, exclaiming “I just EGOT!”
EGOT被作为一个词读作/EE-gaht/，而不是拼出它的字母。我们听到维奥拉·戴维斯在格莱美奖的获奖感言中这样发音，她高呼：“我刚刚EGOT了！”

We don’t currently enter EGOT as a verb in the dictionary, but perhaps this usage will catch on.
我们目前还没有在字典中将EGOT作为一个动词收录，但也许这种用法会流行起来。

Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter as X sent many people to the dictionary to learn more about this unusually flexible letter. It doesn’t just represent a letter and its sound, but also has various meanings and functions: for example, it stands for “an unknown quantity,” it’s a symbol for the act of multiplication, and it is used as a substitute for “by” in measurements, as in “The room was 10’x15’.”
埃隆·马斯克将推特重新命名为X，这让许多人翻阅字典，以了解这个异常灵活的字母更多信息。它不仅代表一个字母及其发音，还有各种含义和功能：例如，它代表“未知数”，它是乘法行为的符号，它被用作测量中的“乘以”，如“房间大小为10英尺x15英尺”。

Other letters carry meaning by themselves, (think of F for “failure” or to a T meaning “perfection”), but X has a mystique all its own. Linguist Marcel Danesi was quoted as commenting that X “reverberates with all kinds of meanings that are intuitive, unconscious, and archetypal.”
其他字母本身也承载着意义（想想F代表“失败”或者T代表“完美”），但X有着它自己的神秘感。语言学家马塞尔·达内西被引述评论说，X“回响着各种直观的、无意识的、原型的含义”。

Lookups for X spiked 885% on July 23, the date of the rebranding announcement, although the value of the platform has declined significantly since then.
在7月23日重新命名公告当天，查找X的次数激增了885%，尽管自那时起该平台的价值已大幅下降。

When a submersible attempting to visit the wreck of the Titanic disappeared in June, the search made international headlines. Titan, the world eventually learned, had imploded.
六月份，一艘试图探访泰坦尼克号沉船的潜水器消失了，搜救行动成为了国际头条新闻。世界最终得知，泰坦号已经内爆了。

While explode is a common word, implode is encountered less frequently; people turned to the dictionary to understand it. Something that implodes bursts inward or undergoes violent compression—in this case, from the immense water pressure two miles below the ocean’s surface. The noun implosion also saw a dramatic increase in lookups.
虽然“爆炸”这个词很常见，但“内爆”这个词出现的频率较低；人们查阅字典以理解其含义。内爆是指某物向内爆炸或遭受剧烈压缩——在这个案例中，是由于海洋表面下两英里处的巨大水压。名词“内爆”也在查阅中显著增加。

Submersible itself was also a top lookup. A submersible is a small underwater craft used for deep-sea research.
“潜水器”本身也是热门的查阅词。潜水器是一种用于深海研究的小型水下航行器。

Doppelgänger saw multiple lookup spikes from independent events. Media coverage of two crimes—one in Germany and one in New York, each involving the murder or attempted murder of someone’s lookalike—focused on the word. So did a story about two minor league baseball players who, despite sharing professions, names, and similar physical features (height, coloring, glasses), were shown via a DNA test to be unrelated. And September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.
“替身”一词因多个独立事件而频繁被查阅。两起犯罪事件的媒体报道——一起发生在德国，另一起发生在纽约，每一起都涉及谋杀或企图谋杀某人的相貌相似者——都聚焦于这个词汇。还有一个关于两名小联盟棒球运动员的故事，尽管他们有着相同的职业、姓名和相似的身体特征（身高、肤色、眼镜），但通过DNA测试显示他们并无血缘关系。9月，诺米·克莱因的书《替身：进入镜像世界》也发布了。

Doppelgänger can refer to a living person that closely resembles another living person—that is, a double; or it can refer to the opposite side of one’s personality. In German folklore a Doppelgänger is a ghostly counterpart of a living person. The word is formed from two words that together mean “double goer.”
“替身”可以指长得非常相似的另一个活人，即一个复制人；或者它可以指一个人性格的对立面。在德国民间传说中，替身是一个活人的幽灵副本。这个词是由两个意为“双重行者”的词组合而成的。

Several very different stories contributed to an increase in lookups for covenant, defined as “a formal, solemn, and binding agreement” or “a written agreement or promise.”
几个截然不同的故事导致了对“covenant”一词的查找量增加，该词定义为“正式的、庄严的、有约束力的协议”或“书面协议或承诺”。

A tragic shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27th coincided with the first spike in lookups for covenant. The word remained higher during the April release of Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, a film depicting the rescue of an Afghan interpreter who had saved the life of a U.S. soldier in combat. In May, a much-anticipated new novel by Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water, became an instant bestseller featured in Oprah’s Book Club. Finally, reports in early November revealed that the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, uses an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor the websites he visits, by sharing them automatically with an accountability partner, in this case Johnson’s teenage son.
3月27日纳什维尔的Covenant学校发生悲剧性枪击事件，恰逢“covenant”一词查找量的首次激增。随着盖·里奇的电影《The Covenant》4月份的上映，该词的搜索量保持较高，该片描绘了一名阿富汗翻译员在战斗中救了一名美国士兵的生命后的营救行动。5月，亚伯拉罕·维尔盖塞期待已久的新小说《The Covenant of Water》一经推出即成为畅销书，并被奥普拉的书籍俱乐部推荐。最后，11月初的报道揭露，众议院新议长迈克·约翰逊使用一个名为Covenant Eyes的应用程序来监控他访问的网站，通过与问责伙伴自动分享，这个案例中的问责伙伴是约翰逊的青少年儿子。

Covenant has a religious resonance because of its use in the Bible. It appears over 200 times in the King James Version of the Bible, mostly in the Old Testament, referring to promises of different kinds, sometimes between people, and sometimes between individuals and God. In the Book of Exodus, covenant refers to the Ten Commandments.
“Covenant”一词因其在圣经中的使用而具有宗教共鸣。在《圣经》詹姆斯王版本中，该词出现了200多次，大多数出现在旧约中，指的是不同种类的承诺，有时是人与人之间的，有时是个人与上帝之间的。在《出埃及记》中，“covenant”指的是十诫。

Indict was often in the news this year. Former President Donald Trump was indicted in four separate cases now moving through the legal system, and indict spiked by 9440% on March 30, when a New York City grand jury charged the former president in the hush-money case.
今年，“indict”一词经常出现在新闻中。前总统唐纳德·特朗普在四个不同的案件中被起诉，现在这些案件正在法律体系中推进，而在3月30日纽约市大陪审团指控前总统在封口费案件中时，“indict”一词的搜索量激增了9440%。

Indict is defined as “to charge with a crime by the finding or presentment of a jury (such as a grand jury) in due form of law.” Like most words in our legal vocabulary, indict comes from French (others include judge, jury, arraign, appeal, and acquit).
起诉被定义为“通过法律正当形式的陪审团（如大陪审团）的发现或陈述来对某人提出罪名。”像我们法律词汇中的大多数词汇一样，起诉这个词来源于法语（其他包括法官、陪审团、提审、上诉和无罪释放）。

The silent c in indict is the result of scholars in the Renaissance “correcting” the spelling of the French borrowing by adding the c from its Latin ancestor. Before their tampering, the word was spelled indite.
起诉中的沉默字母c是文艺复兴时期学者“纠正”从法语借用的拼写，加入了来自其拉丁语祖先的c的结果。在他们的篡改之前，这个词被拼写为indite。

In June, the title of the new Pixar film Elemental made lookups spike. Appropriately enough, this title employs the original and oldest meaning of element: “any of the four substances air, water, fire, and earth formerly believed to compose the physical universe.”
在六月，皮克斯新电影《基本的》的标题使得查找量激增。恰如其分的是，这个标题采用了元素最初和最古老的含义：“空气、水、火和土这四种曾被认为构成物理宇宙的物质。”

With characters that embody fire, water, earth, and air as anthropomorphized qualities, the film’s plot becomes an allegory about identity and prejudice.
随着电影中扮演火、水、土和空气的角色具有了拟人化的特质，电影的情节成为了关于身份和偏见的寓言。

When Hamas launched attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7th, civilians living in kibbutzim were among the targets. A term unfamiliar to many outside Israel, kibbutz refers to a communal farm or settlement in Israel.
10月7日，哈马斯从加沙地带向以色列发动攻击时，居住在基布兹的平民是袭击目标之一。基布兹这个对许多非以色列人来说不熟悉的词，指的是以色列的公社农场或定居点。

Other terms relating to Hamas’s attack and Israel’s military response that saw an increase in lookups were blood libel and intifada.
与哈马斯的攻击和以色列军事回应相关的其他术语，搜索量增加的有血腥诽谤和起义。