All over the world there are people, who, like me, have too much time on their hands. Groups of these people gather as each new year approaches. They are tasked with selecting — drum roll, please — the word of the year in their particular country.

At least seven such groups select a word of the year in the English language. These people represent such organizations as the American Dialect Society, England's Cambridge Dictionary, the Collins English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, the Oxford University Press, Britain's publication, The Economist, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (published in Springfield, Massachusetts).

Their selections are of absolutely no importance and of little relevance, but the task gives these folks something to do and their choices usually result in a story that gets published in a few newspapers and on Wikipedia, then soon forgotten.

LAST YEAR four groups selected slop as the English language word of the year, though the people's choice in Australia was more specific: AI slop, defined as "low-quality, automated content generated by AI."

"Slop" has been a favorite word of mine for about 50 years, but my use of it, obviously, did not refer to AI. My wife cringed when the subject of dinner came up and I'd suggest we slop around. That is, we each fend for ourselves with whatever food we could find.

Slop lost out to parasocial with the Cambridge Dictionary folks went in 2025. This group pretends there is an actual basis for their selection, claiming the winner is based on “user data, zeitgeist and language.” And that's how they came up with parasocial.

THE 2025 choice from Dictionary.com was 6-7. So when this year's word was announced, I knew it would be something said almost exclusively by people in the 18-to-25 age group. I was wrong. We've all been using the word for many years. It's maxxing, which more deserved being named word of the year back in 1993.

The word-watchers at Collins English Dictionary, who last year chose vibe coding, selected as the 2026 word of the year: mogging. This is defined as outperforming or outshining someone or something else, making them look inferior. One way to do this is through an excess of maxxing.

I am curious about this year's selection in Canada where the word of the year is determined by the Strathy Language Unit at Queen's University. Last year's winner was maplewash, which described the practice of making things appear more Canadian than they actually are. The word is similar to our sanewashing, which is something done by certain media outlets to make Donald Trump seem less deranged than he really is.

NOT ANNOUNCED as of this writing is the word of the year from Merriam-Webster. Last year's selection was slop. Previous winners have included surreal, they and gaslighting.

This year's selection should be obvious, but I'm not expecting Merriam-Webster to pick it unless their voters have been paying rapt attention to Donald Trump, our wordsmith president, whose vocabulary is approaching 100 words.

So our word of the year should be the word that has become the Trump favorite — dumb. I'll bet a lot of you didn't know there's a B at the end of it.

Selecting this word would make up for oversights last year and in 2024 when the winners should have been the Trump-inspired affordability and, from 2024, a word Trump learned during his election campaign: groceries.

I've got to admit — in some ways I'm going to miss that man when he's out of office. While his behavior usually is extremely boorish ("Quiet, piggy!"), occasionally he's hilarious, like he could be the second coming of Gracie Allen.