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We explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,971,223-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This weeks entry: Words Coined in the 2010s

What its about: Language is ever embiggening, and the last ten years have seen many cromulent additions to our anaspeptic mother tongue. So lets continue our end-of-decade contrafibularities with a compunctuous look at the phrasmotic phrases weve added in the 2010s.

Biggest controversy: There are a lot of politics-inspired words on the list. From infamous Trump typo covfefe and Sarah Palin non-word refudiate to cuckservative (which turns the rights favorite insult against those on the right who arent considered conservative enough) to Brexit, weve had to learn a lot of new words and phrases we wish we hadnt. The 2010s also gave us Bernie Bro, a term for a particularly aggressive and often sexist faction of Bernie Sanders supporters, which many Sanders supporters will vehemently deny is a thing.

Strangest fact: Apparently every decade has its own portmanteau holiday. In the 2000s, teen drama The O.C. introduced the world to interfaith winter holiday Chrismukkah, and a quirk of the calendar in 2013 gave us Thanksgivukkah. The date of Hanukkah moves around depending on the lunar calendar (as with Easter, even the faithful are usually fuzzy on how the date is determined). 2013s festival of lights was so early, it began in late November, so that the second night coincided with Thanksgiving. The mash-up holiday spawned recipes like Manischewitz-brined turkey, pecan pie rugelach, and pumpkin spiced latkes. Nine-year-old Asher Weintraub even ran a successful Kickstarter to build a $48,000 turkey-shaped menurkey (a turkey-shaped menorah). Jews and goyim alike got into the spirit, but fans of the holiday may have to wait to see a dreidel in the Thanksgiving Day Parade again. Because of the vagaries of the Jewish and Gregorian calendars, Hanukkah wont start on Thanksgiving night until 2070.

Thing we were happiest to learn: The rest of the world has some new political phrases, and theyre generally more positive ones than Americas. Germany discovered the concept of willkommenskultur (welcome culture), a mindset that institutions should be welcoming to foreigners and migrants. India introduced Pakodanomics, economic policies intended to encourage entrepreneurship. Turkish protestors began apuling, a word taken from the Turkish word for marauders, meaning to fight for ones rights. Even South Koreas negative term Hell Joseon (Joseon was a medieval Korean dynasty, and is still used as a nickname for the country), describes the bleak economic outlook for the countrys younger generation, but is borne out of a desire to end income inequality.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Some of these new words arent a word, singular. Wikipedia also lists Parliamentary votes on Brexit, which is just a thing that happened, and Bollocks to Brexit, the typically British response. Trump Derangement Syndrome is just an update of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, a phrase in the 1990s to describe Republicans tendency to see scandal in everything Bill Clinton did, from hiring a new travel agent to getting a haircut to the Ruby Ridge siege that happened six months before he took office. Swapping out Clinton for Trump is more than simply updating for a new administration, however, as Trumps scandals are more numerous and more serious, and using the same phrase seems to be an attempt to BOTH SIDES (a phrase that isnt on the list but probably should be) alleged treason and Filegate.

Also noteworthy: The A.V. Club has also contributed to the lexicon. Our own Myles McNutt coined the phrase sexposition in a review of Game Of Thrones to describe the series technique of making necessary plot information more appealing to the audience by revealing it during a sex scene, or setting the conversation in a brothel, as Thrones early seasons so often did. The term has been retroactively applied to other nudity-friendly premium cable shows including The Sopranos, Deadwood, and Weeds.

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: Unless youre desperate to read more about manspreading, the next logical step is to take a broader view of 21st-century neologisms. The page in turn links to this pages 2000s counterpart (in case anyones feeling nostalgic for Yacht rock, the Shaggy Defense, or the Axis Of Evil), a larger Words and Phrases Introduced in the 21st Century, and, oddly, only three specific phrases: Battle royale game, Intellectual dark web, and Spoon theory, which much to our dismay has nothing to do with the band or The Tick.

Further Down the Wormhole: At this point, we may just keep doing 2010s pages until the decade is put out of its misery. So as tempting as 2010s Racehorse Deaths is, well follow the 2010s category to 2010s in music, and will see if we can figure out the difference between black metal and blackened death metal next week.

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From deepfake to manspreading, heres a look at words that dawned in the 2010s - The A.V. Club