Merriam-Webster picks ‘they’ as 2019 word of the year

The Merriam-Webster dictionary chose “they” as the word of the year for 2019 after announcing earlier this year that it had added a singular definition to the pronoun.

“English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence, they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years,” the group wrote in its announcement. “More recently, though, they has also been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary, a sense that is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as social media and in daily personal interactions between English speakers.”