Welcome to our language: ‘rizz’. Here’s the OED definition: colloquial noun, ‘defined as ‘style, charm or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner’. It was announced on Monday as the Dictionary’s word of the year, and it’s here to stay sadly, because that’s how language works. That’s why we don’t speak like George Eliot characters.
Rizz became popular the way all words do nowadays: they start somewhere opaque online, then filter effortlessly into real life. As a 23-year-old, I hear it semi-frequently, although I kind of wish I didn’t.
What does it mean for a word to go ‘viral’? It means that everyone starts using them, and then we get a stale monoculture. These words, by definition, become clichés immediately. The worst example of this zombie language is the decline of adjectives, and the replacement of descriptive terms by saying something has ‘X’ vibes.
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