MANILA, Philippines — Cambridge Dictionary revealed that the word "manifest" is its Word of the Year for 2024, after the word was searched nearly 130,000 times on its website.
The dictionary defines the verb as "to use methods such as visualization and affirmation to help one imagine achieving something one wants, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen."
Cambridge believes the rise of the use of "manifest" is because of famous performers, star athletes, and influential entrepreneurs claims that they achieved something as a result of "manifesting."
As a result, "manifest" was given a new definition in May last year, which could also mean "to use specific practices to focus one's mind on something one wants, to try to make it become a reality" despite having no scientific basis.
This kind of "manifesting" was seen during the Olympics with gold medal winners like Simone Biles, with Cambridge searches for "manifest" spiking a day after the two women's gymnastic apparatus finals.
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On the entertainment front, fans of singer Sabrina Carpenter dubbed her a "manifesting queen" after appearing on Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour," while Dua Lipa said she manifested her Glastonbury Festival concert to surpass 100,000 attendees.
"'Manifest' won this year because it increased notably in lookups, its use widened greatly across all types of media, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time," said the dictionary's publishing manager Wendalyn Nichols.
Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2023 was "hallucinate," with past selections that include "perseverance," "quarantine," and "paranoid."
Another dictionary, Collins, previously announced its word of the year for 2024 was "brat," likely as a result after Charli XCX used it as the name of her sixth album released last June.
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