Yzabelle Bostyn
THE 2024 word of the year has been revealed in Spain.
Each year, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) chooses a word that has defined the last twelve months.
For 2024, Spanish language experts have chosen DANA, referring to the meteorological phenomenon which wrought havoc in Valencia at the end of October.
It was selected from a shortlist of ten words, including: alucinacion (shock), fango (mud), gordofobia (fat phobia), inquiokupa (squatting), mena (unaccompanied foreign minor), micropiso (microflat), narcolancha (drug boat), pellet, reduflacion (Shrinkflation), turistificacion (touristification) and woke.
The RAE states they chose the word due to its huge presence in the media, which increased after severe flooding struck the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol on October 31.
Over 200 people died in the disaster, which shocked communities worldwide.
The language experts also chose the word for its ‘linguistic interest’ and ‘confusion’ its spelling causes for Spaniards.
DANA was already up for word of the year in 2019 but lost out to ‘emojis.’
It is defined as ‘a high-altitude weather system that causes torrential downpours and is also known as a cold drop.’
Previous words of the year are protest (2013), selfie (2014), refugee (2015), populism (2016),
‘aporophobia’ (2017), ‘microplastic’ (2018), ‘emojis’ (2019), ‘confinement’ (2020), ‘vaccine’ (2021), ‘artificial intelligence’ (2022) and ‘polarisation’ (2023).
