No joshing around – ’authentic’ truly is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. The oldest American dictionary defines ‘authentic’ in a couple of ways, including “not false or imitation” and “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” As for why they chose it, they said that interest in the term had spiked due to “stories and conversations around AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media”. Less high-minded was the Aussie Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year, which is ‘cozzie livs’ – aka slang for “cost of living”. Macquarie’s pool of potential winners limits the dictionary to new words, and ‘cozzie livs’ is fresh… But editor Victoria Morgan reckons there’s a gravity to the choice because “when something is very serious”, Aussies shorten it up “to discuss things in a more light-hearted manner”.