My Australian Word of the Year for 2023 is ‘No’. I made the announcement this week on Peta Credlin’s show on Sky News. Earlier I had called for nominations and votes for an Australian Word of the Year on my website ozwords.com.au, on Credlin, and with John Stanley on 2GB and other stations.

A total of 39 highly topical words were nominated by viewers and readers, reflecting the issues dominating the news over the past 12 months. These I whittled down to a short of list of ten. In addition to the final winner ‘No’ the short list included: ‘Voice’, ‘misinformation’, ‘AI’, ‘Woke’, ‘diversity’, ‘Airbus-Albo’, ‘colonisation’, ‘midwit’ (meaning a person one step up from a nitwit) and ‘Controligarchs’ (powerful corporations that tell everyone else what to do).

Viewers and readers chose ‘No’ by an overwhelming majority. In racing parlance, you could say it was ‘No’ first and daylight second. Voters supporting ‘No’ said they based their choice not just on ‘No’ having won the referendum 61 per cent to 39 per cent, but also because they saw this as such a significant issue for Australia’s culture and wider society.

They added that the apparent reluctance of some to embrace the ‘No’ win also inspired their choice. One correspondent wrote that she wanted to ask the Prime Minister, ‘What part of No don’t you understand?’

On the short list ‘Controligarchs’ also polled very strongly. The word is recorded in the Urban Dictionary and cites Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk as examples of ‘Controligarchs’.

‘Midwit’ also polled extremely well. Online dictionaries define it as a person of average intelligence who is opinionated and self-important. Perhaps unkindly, a number of correspondents applied this word to Australian politicians’. At the head of the other nominees came ‘Voice’ and ‘misinformation’.