"Youthquake" is the verbal concoction recently declared Word of the Year (the year being 2017) by the experts at Oxford Dictionaries. They define it as "significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people."
Actually, "youthquake" dates from 1965, when it was coined by the fashion industry. But Oxford says that the incidence of "youthquake" spiked around the time of the British elections last June.
According to Merriam-Webster's, "feminism" was the most searched-for word in its online dictionary, up seventy per cent from 2016. But who in 2017 needed to be told what "feminism" means?
On the whole, 2017 was not a great year for the English language. Reality is running ahead of our vocabulary. For one thing, no good terms have emerged to describe the current state of political affairs.
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean," Humpty Dumpty says to Alice. Later on, of course, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Something to look forward to in 2018.
Source: Louis Menand in the January 8, 2018, THE NEW YORKER