+
upworthy
Most Shared

What you need to know about 'xenophobia,' Dictionary.com's word of the year.

And the Dictionary.com award for "Word of the Year 2016" goes to...

GIF via originbob/YouTube.

Xenophobia!

The word means a "fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers," and it has dominated the conversation so much in 2016 that it's taken the most prestigious end-of-year word-award in the land.


As Dictionary.com's blog explains of the choice, "We aim to pick a Word of the Year that embodies a major theme resonating deeply in the cultural consciousness over the prior 12 months. This year, some of the most prominent news stories have centered around fear of the 'other.'"

Unfortunately, Dictionary.com is right. 2016 has been an action-packed year for fear and/or hatred of "other" marginalized groups.

There was a massive refugee crisis that sparked a series of surprisingly high-level debates on whether "refugee" and "terrorist" could be used synonymously (they can't). There were undeniably xenophobic undertones to Britain's decision to leave the European Union. And of course...

Photo by Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images.

...there was Donald Trump — a candidate whose campaign was peppered with one xenophobic sentiment after another, and who has helped usher in the mainstream rise of white nationalist movements like the so-called "alt-right."

That said, declaring "xenophobia" the word of the year isn't, strictly speaking, a bad thing.

For one, it shows people are interested in learning more about what exactly it is.

Photo by Evan Porter/Upworthy.

To find candidates for "Word of the Year," Dictionary.com says it looks at internal search trends. "Xenophobia" saw a spike in traffic several times in 2016. On June 24, one day after the Brexit vote, dictionary searches for the word spiked by an incredible 938%. Hundreds of people were looking up the word per hour.

A similar spike in search traffic occurred on June 29 after President Obama made a speech expressing concern over Donald Trump's political rhetoric.

Sure, some of those people might have just been looking up the spelling so they could lay it down in a decimating Scrabble move, but odds are, many were looking it up because they were hearing it thrown around a lot and wanted to know what it meant. That's a good thing.

A woman protesting xenophobic violence in South Africa in 2015. Photo by Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty Images.

The first step toward addressing a toxic problem is becoming personally and culturally aware of what that problem is.

When we know the word xenophobia, it becomes easier to speak out when we see it or to use it to identify our own prejudices. Xenophobia is not a word to be celebrated, but it's an important one to understand so we can all get better at stopping it.

Looking it up in the dictionary is a good place to start.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less

An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less