LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

SPANISH WORD OF THE YEAR: MY PERSONAL CHOICE As 2025 comes to an end, there is a word in Spain that seems to be on everybody’s lips. It has dominated the news—morning, afternoon, and night—throughout the year. The Real Academia Española will no doubt make its own selection, but my choice, as an eyewitness to daily usage, is CORRUPCIÓN . Corrupción —corruption, the state of being corrupt, marked by dishonest practices such as bribery, lack of integrity, and crookedness—has become part of Spain’s everyday political vocabulary. Corruption appears to be perceived as widespread within the Spanish government and, more specifically, within the governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). The words CORRUPCIÓN and CORRUPTO are now common currency on radio and television, in cafés, and at tertulias , both private and public. My Random House Dictionary does not mince words: “ CORRUPT applies to one, especially in public office, who acts on mercenary motives, without regard to honor, ri...

Oxford University Press, the publisher of the renowned dictionary OED, Oxford English Dictionary, recently announced its "word of the year" for 2024. The word is "brain rot," even though it consists of two words. This expression of the year is defined as:   (n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration."  This fixed expression or lexical unit is treated as one word. The problem arises with hyphenation: should it be "brain rot" or "brain-rot"?  Hyphenation is falling out of favor in  modern English, especially in informal or online discourse . Many compounds that once took a hyphen ( e-mail , on-line ) have lost it over time ( email , online ). Since brain rot emerged from internet slang, its unhyphenated form l...