Word of the Year 2040

From the Can We Do It? archives. An oldy but a goody as we wait for Merriam-Webster to unveil the 2050 word of the year in December. 

NEW YORK –‘Fossauto’—a gasoline powered car or a slangy synonym for a cantankerous old man—is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2040. 

Lexicographers first noted the use of fossauto in the late 20s – early 30s when the large-scale internal combustion engine bans came online and the dominance of electric vehicles, now mostly just described as cars, expanded. Fossauto materialized as a shorthand version of “fossil fuel powered automobile” in car ads in the late 2020s when dealers and private sellers had to specify the source of fuel in their advertisements. The adjective ‘electric’ slowly disappeared as a modifier for car and vehicle in the 2030s. Simultaneously, a range of creative monikers for those cars still burning gasoline (gasser, smoker, fossauto, gcar) emerged, often used in a pejorative sense. 

Fossauto caught the public’s imagination when a middle-aged Greta Thunberg, ever the firebrand, hurled the term as an insult at the CEO of Shexxon at the 2038 World Environment and Economic Forum. 

“It was Greta’s ‘fossauto heard round the world’ that really propelled this new term into the lexicon,” said Juanita Olowke, Merriam Webster’s chief editor at a reception following the unveiling. “While fossauto is still used in ads for the dwindling number of gasoline powered cars, mostly for aficionados and car clubs, it has really exploded in the last two years as a way to mark generational divides, disdain for a fossil fuel past, and those still pining for it.” 

“For those of us old enough to remember the 2020s,” she said, laughing, “fossauto has become the ‘okay boomer’ of this generation.”

Merriam-Webster chooses its words based on how often and in what way words are searched for on its Facenet page and how words trend in usage over time. At the unveiling, Olowke noted that climate related words have dominated their Facenet searches for the past few years. The top five this year included two additional climate-related words.