Words of the Year

Last November, the Pushkin Russian Language Institute announced its choice of 2024 Word of the Year. The “winner” chosen by the panel of Russian language scholars was Пу́шкин (Pushkin). True, 2024 marked 225 years since the beloved writer’s birth and events were held to commemorate this anniversary, but still… in terms of nonsensicalness, this choice is rivaled only by the one triumphantly announced by several publishers at Moscow’s December book fair, who decided that мир (peace) was what Russia was all about in 2024. 

These selections were absurd not only in the Orwellian sense of being completely out of sync with reality, but also because 2024 offered such a bountiful field of candidates. The events and attributes of wartime continue to be copiously reflected in the lexicon. For this edition of our exploration of contemporary Russian, we have identified ten words and expressions that would surely have been top 2024 word-of-the-year contenders if only an independent panel of judges had been allowed to select them. 

In all fairness, it should be noted that this word (quadrobers in English, and probably the 2024 neologism that caused the most stir in Russia) was included in the Pushkin Institute’s list of other “key words.” As the Institute noted in its social media posts: “Unlike other candidate words, it is distinguished by unquestionable novelty and an explosive growth in popularity.” Quadrobing (or quadrobics – the word originally emerged as an analogy with aerobics) is practiced by a subculture of people who imitate the behavior and appearance of four-legged animals by dressing up and moving on all fours.