Big News Words for 2022 Quiz: Top 22 Words of the Year 2022

According to Merriam-Webster, gaslighting is the act or practice of misleading someone, especially to one’s advantage. The word spent the entire year of 2022 in the top 50 words looked up on Merriam-Webster.com. Gaslighting can occur in both personal and political contexts. The term comes from a 1938 play about a man attempting to make his wife believe she is going mad (and the 1944 movie is based on it). 2021’s word of the year was “vaccine.”

What’s Medical Gaslighting?

Patients who feel their symptoms are dismissed as psychologic are said to suffer from medical gaslighting.

Oxford Dictionaries announced on Dec. 5, 2022, that “goblin mode” had been chosen by online voting as its word of the year for 2022. This definition describes “goblin mode” as a behavior that rejects social norms or expectations without apology. “Goblin mode” first appeared on Twitter in 2009 and gained popularity in Feb. 2022 as people emerged from pandemic lockdowns.

Use goblin mode in a sentence

Oxford lists this Guardian quote as a good example of using the term: “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2 am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines.”

As monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries in 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided on Nov. 28 to rename it mpox to avoid “racist and stigmatizing language.” Monkeypox and mpox will both be used for the next year while the old name is phased out.

Launched in Oct. 2021, Wordle is a viral wordplay game that allows players six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes every day. The daily puzzle was quickly attracting millions of players. The New York Times announced, on Jan. 31, 2022, it has acquired Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

Cyberflashing is a term that describes someone using the internet to send an image of their naked body to someone they do not know and who has not asked them to do this (commonly known as sending a di** pic) – And it is now illegal in the UK. On March 13, 2022, UK ministers have confirmed that the British Online Safety Bill will include laws banning cyberflashing. The change means that anyone who sends a photo or film of a person’s genitals may face up to two years in prison – if their purpose was their sexual gratification or to cause the recipient humiliation, alarm, or distress.

Gender-affirming (or confirming) care is transgender health care – preventing, diagnosing, and treating physical and mental conditions among transgender individuals. It often involves hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and, sometimes, surgery.

Where is it illegal?

On Oct. 17, 2022, the first US trial on a state’s ban on gender-confirming care for children began in Arkansas. Doctors who give gender-affirming treatment to anyone under 18 years old or even refer patients to such treatment could lose their licenses if the law takes effect.

ChatGPT is a chatbot that is powered by the GPT-3 language model. It uses machine learning algorithms to generate responses to user input. The GPT-3 model is a large, state-of-the-art language model trained on a massive amount of text data, allowing it to generate coherent and relevant responses to a given topic. ChatGPT can be used to chat with users in a conversational manner, providing answers to questions and engaging in back-and-forth dialogue. While it may not always provide the most accurate or detailed answers, it can be a fun and interesting way to interact with a machine-learning model.

Did an AI Chatbot write this answer?

The question, multiple answers, and (in this case, factual) explanation were written by OpenAI’s ChatGPT by using the prompt: “Create a quiz question on the subject “What is ChatGPT?” with four short multiple-choice answers, one funny, two misleading answers, and one correct answer, and then a 150-word explanation of the correct answer.” The prompt took longer to write than for the result to be generated. Within a week of ChatGPT being unveiled on Nov. 30, 2022, over a million users had tried to chat it up.

In 2016, Mastodon was launched as a “free, open-source, decentralized social media platform” aimed at being a “viable alternative to Twitter.” Mastodon is a federated social network owned by different people and groups. A lot of Mastodon is crowdfunded. The servers it runs are funded through Patreon, a subscription platform used by content creators. More than 70,000 users joined Mastodon on the day after Elon Musk announced he bought Twitter.

Wasn’t Mastodon something else?

The Mastodon social platform was named after an extinct relative of elephants and mammoths.

Leap seconds are adjustments occasionally made to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on Jun. 30 or Dec. 31 to accommodate a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. After being introduced in 1972, 27 leap seconds have been added to the UTC, with the last occurring in 2016.

Will the leap second be retired?

At its 27th General Conference on Nov. 18, 2022, BIPM, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, passed a resolution to stop adding leap seconds by 2035. Alternatives include allowing the discrepancy between Earth’s rotation and atomic time to build up to one minute, requiring adjustments every 50 to 100 years.

On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA’s asteroid-striking mission DART – short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test – hit a harmless asteroid 7 million miles (11.3 million kilometers) from Earth at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). The unprecedented attempt to change the asteroid’s path could potentially someday save Earth from a deadly impact.

Artemis is the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, wilderness, wild animals, nature, childbirth, and care for children. She is presented as a hunting goddess of the woods.

What’s NASA’s Artemis?

On Nov. 16, 2022, NASA’s Artemis I rocket launched into space, taking an astronaut-less capsule for a test drive around the moon. NASA’s Artemis program strives to put astronauts on the moon again after five decades.

Status quo ante is Latin for the state where (things were) before, usually the state of affairs before an upsetting development.

Who used “Status Quo Ante” in a sentence in 2022?

Veteran US statesman Dr. Henry Kissinger, 92, told the World Economic Forum in Davos on May 23, 2022, that defeating Russian forces in Ukraine would have disastrous consequences for the long-term stability of Europe. Instead, he suggested that negotiations need to begin in the next two months. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante,” he said.

Hypersonic missiles, by definition, fly at least 5 times the speed of sound (Mach 5), can fly at up to 10 times the speed of sound, and can maneuver in mid-flight, making it harder for air-defense systems to intercept. Russia has said it has twice deployed its newest Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile in Ukraine, claiming on March 20, 2022, to have destroyed a fuel depot near Mykolaiv and an underground ammunition storage site in the west.

The Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, commonly known as Captchas, are the little assignments, like spotting all the boats in a picture or typing out some letters and numbers, that help keep bots out of websites. A new feature in Apple’s iOS 16 and the upcoming version of macOS, called “automatic verification,” will allow sites to verify that you are not a robot without “captchas.”

Flue effect, also known as stack effect or chimney effect, is when heated air rises in a shaft, like the one created by two open doors at the Jan. 10, 2022, Bronx fire. Seventeen people were killed from inhaling smoke pouring through a malfunctioning door and spreading up to the top of the 19-story building.

CERN is the European Center for Nuclear Research, home to the world-famous particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) –  that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in 2012. Now scientists at CERN say they have observed a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks,” adding to the list of new hadrons found at the LHC. The particle accelerator was successfully restarted in July 2022.

LEO satellites are low-earth orbit satellites. The satellites are 36 times closer to the earth than traditional satellites, reducing communication delays and allowing for faster broadband service even in remote areas.

Does Apple iPhone 14 offer satellite communication?

On Sept. 7, 2022, Apple announced that it would allow emergency satellite communication with iPhone 14. The service is offered at no extra cost for two years.

How does it work?

Apple-designed components and software allow iPhone 14 antennas to connect to satellite frequencies, sending a text message in less than 15 seconds in clear conditions. Apple selected Globalstar satellites to provide the service.

When is iPhone 14 available?

Preorders for iPhone 14 start on Sept. 9, 2022. The standard iPhone 14 ships on Sept. 16, and the 14 Plus on Oct. 7.

APIs (application programming interfaces) allow computer programs to communicate and exchange data. In late-Sept. 2022 Optus, Australia’s second-largest wireless carrier, suffered a breach of 9.8 million customer records after its API was left open by error.

Alopecia, AKA spot baldness, is an autoimmune disease in which hair is lost from some or all body areas, often resulting in bald spots about the size of a coin. People with the condition are generally otherwise healthy, with no obvious trigger for the disease.

Does Jada Pinkett Smith suffer from alopecia?

Screenshot: 94th Academy Awards / ABC

Jada Pinkett Smith revealed in 2018 that she was diagnosed with alopecia. She has often discussed hair loss challenges on Instagram and other social media platforms. Pinkett came to the 2022 Oscars alongside her husband, Will Smith, the Best Leading Actor award winner for “King Richard.” When Chris Rock took verbal aim at Pinkett Smith’s shaved head from the stage, referencing the 1997 film G.I. Jane in which Demi Moore shaved her head, Will Smith took a swing at him. Smith later apologized.

Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or communicate because of damage to specific brain regions. Its most common causes are a stroke, severe head injury, a brain tumor, and progressive neurological conditions such as dementia, and it is most common in people over 65.

Does Bruce Willis have aphasia?

On March 30, 2022, actor Bruce Willis’s (67) family announced he’s retiring from showbiz after recently being diagnosed with aphasia. The statement said Willis had been “experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities. As a result of this and with much consideration, Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”

Spastic diplegia is a form of cerebral palsy (CP) – a chronic neuromuscular condition. It usually involves a constant stiffness in the muscles of the legs. The word “spaz” is considered a derogatory reference to the medical term spastic diplegia.

What does Beyoncé have to do with the ableist word “spaz”?

Weeks after rapper Lizzo changed the lyrics of her song “Grrrls” to remove the offensive word, Beyoncé retracted her song “Heated” from her 2022 album “Renaissance” to replace the same term.

Poutine is a classic Quebec dish of french fries and cheese curds topped with brown gravy. The dish’s name is widely believed to come from the French-Canadian pronunciation of the English word “pudding.” The famous dish shares its name – in French transliteration – with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. Poutine restaurants in France received threats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.