It might still throw up a squiggly red line on Word but “rizz” has been officially named the word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary.
The UK publication combs through millions of words a year to find the phrase that has most wormed its way into the public eye.
Previous Oxford Dictionary words of the year include “vax”, “youthquake” and the crying while laughing emoji.
What is rizz short for?
Rizz is a shortening of the word charisma — if you take away the “char” and the “ma”, you’re left with that “ris” syllable.
And, rather than settling for the actual spelling of it, opting for a double z gives it more… rizz.
Oxford says it’s unusual for the middle of a word to become its shorthand.
Other examples include “fridge” (refrigerator) and “flu” (influenza).
What does rizz mean?
The Oxford Dictionary defines rizz as, “Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness.”
The UK publication says that the popularity of rizz skyrocketed in 2023, peaking in June due to an interview with Spider-Man star Tom Holland.
The young actor was asked by BuzzFeed what the secret to his rizz was, to which he replied: “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz.”
While primarily defined as a noun by the dictionary, it highlights that rizz can also be used as a verb, often in the phrase “rizz up”, which means “to attract, seduce, or chat up (a person)”.
Here are the other shortlisted finalists that missed out on the 2023 top spot:
- Prompt — “An instruction given to an artificial intelligence program, algorithm, etc., which determines or influences the content it generates.”
- Situationship — “A romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.”
- Swiftie — “An enthusiastic fan of the singer Taylor Swift.”
- Beige flag — “A character trait that indicates that a partner or potential partner is boring or lacks originality.”
- De-influencing — “The practice of discouraging people from buying particular products”
- Heat dome — “A persistent high-pressure weather system over a particular geographic area, which traps a mass of hot air below it.”
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Parasocial — “Designating a relationship characterised by the one-sided, unreciprocated sense of intimacy felt by a viewer, fan, or follower for a well-known or prominent figure (typically a media celebrity), in which the follower or fan comes to feel (falsely) that they know the celebrity as a friend.”
The Oxford word of the year is drawn from a number of candidates gathered by Oxford’s language research program, including the Oxford Corpus, which gathers about 150 million words of current English from web-based publications each month.
Oxford also drew on internet lexicon last year, naming “Goblin Mode” (a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy) as the 2022 word of the year.
Rizz also made an appearance in Australian’s Macquarie Dictionary word of the year shortlist but lost out to “cozzie livs”, the colloquial shortening of the phrase “cost of living”.