Ageotype
In 2020, , a geneticist at Stanford University in California, discovered that we tend to age along four different pathways. He found that the biological signatures associated with ageing are mostly found in four parts of your body – your kidneys, liver, immune system and general metabolism – with one or two of these systems ageing faster than the rest.
Snyder reckons figuring out your “adzٲ” can lead you towards the best strategy to target your predominant ageing pathway, meaning you live healthier for longer. Liver agers, say, might consider laying off the booze. Metabolic agers, meanwhile, should focus on exercise.
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In any case, we might expect the term to rise to prominence, at least within the circles that obsess about this stuff, on the basis that it is at the vanguard of efforts to personalise anti-ageing interventions.
Agrivoltaics
The next time you find yourself walking in the countryside, you may spot some rather odd-looking fields. Some will have crops co-existing with great swathes of solar panels, while others will be full of livestock sheltering or grazing under a photovoltaic canopy. What you would be looking at are “agrivoltaics”, a term that describes solar energy installations designed to work alongside crops or livestock.
Inevitably, some people argue that solar farms blight the landscape and change the nature of rural communities. But in North America, proponents of agrivoltaics are working to convince them that solar farms can help to restore disappearing prairies. In any case, the term will surely stick around because it captures a new frontier in the battle over the transition to renewable energy.
Antevernals
The nature writer has written that this term, originally coined by environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis, describes “spring flowers that bloom uncannily early in the year due to changes in climate, suggesting an eerie time-out-of-jointness”.
Like so many of today’s neologisms, the word captures a facet of the changing environment. Last year, researchers found that UK spring flowers are opening nearly a month earlier than they did before 1986, because of climate change. The scary thing, says at the University of Cambridge, who was part of the team, is that just 1°C of global warming can translate into flowering taking place a whole month earlier. Where does that leave insects, birds and other animals that live in sync with the flowering of specific plants?
Marsification
(BLR) is a participatory art project that asks members of the public to help devise neologisms capturing how we feel about climate change, biodiversity collapse and other transformations. Among their inventions is , an attempt to describe the increasing use of “techno-utopian fantasy to transcend dire physical and ecological realities on Earth”.
The term is a send-up of the idea that we can colonise the Red Planet once our blue world becomes hostile to life. In the BLR’s interpretation, however, marsification captures a fast-developing ideology that presents technological fixes as “universally beneficial solutions”, while ignoring any of the tricky social, political, economic or spiritual aspects of complex problems. Moreover, the BLR adds, it describes attempts “to solve a problem in the most statistically unlikely and unselfconsciously grandiose way possible”.
Noctalgia
Earlier this year, , an astronomer at the University of San Francisco, and at Dark Sky Consulting in Tucson, Arizona, wrote to the journal Science in response to an article exploring the problem light pollution poses for astronomy. Considering that – alongside Elon Musk’s growing fleet of low-orbiting satellites – the duo coined the term to express what they called “sky grief” for the “accelerating loss of the home environment of our shared skies, a disappearance felt globally”. As we lose our ability to see the night sky clearly, they wrote, we are “witnessing loss of heritage, place-based language, identity, storytelling, millennia-old sky traditions and our ability to conduct traditional practices grounded in the ecological integrity of what we call home”.
Astronomers are pushing for regulation to mitigate ground-based light pollution. But Venkatesan and Barentine argue that the UN should designate the skies as “intangible cultural heritage” and expand the “rights of nature” legal theory, which proposes inherent rights for ecosystems and species, to help provide a framework for action.
Parasocial
Parasocial interaction theory seeks to make sense of a phenomenon in which people interact with celebrities, fictional characters, influencers and more as if they were in a genuinely reciprocal relationship with them.
The term “parasocial” was coined by researchers Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in a 1956 paper with the subtitle, . Even then, they suggested that many viewers were experiencing strong connections with the characters in TV shows like The Lone Ranger.
Today, the term is acquiring new significance as people spend ever longer on social media, which tends to encourage the illusion that we can engage in relationships with people we can’t truly interact with. We can expect the phenomenon to continue because, these days, many streamers – influencers who broadcast live – are deliberately seeking to exploit it.
Promptcraft
Otherwise known as prompt engineering, this term has two meanings. For the companies that make generative artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, it refers to the task of training them to deliver more accurate and relevant responses to the questions people pose. For the rest of us, it pertains to the art and science of perfecting the prompts you feed the AIs to get the best possible answers.
As with search engines, there is a knack to writing an effective prompt, and the internet is overflowing with hints and tips. Many experts argue that promptcraft will be a key skill as generative AI becomes an increasingly important part of many jobs. But the prominence of “promptcraft” might be fleeting because generative AI will inevitably become more adept at understanding even ham-fisted queries.
Solastalgia
Coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the distress caused by environmental change, “solastalgia” describes “the homesickness you have when you are still at home, in Albrecht’s words, as the natural world you knew disappears before your eyes.
Solastalgia is often caused by climate change. In one paper, Albrecht explores the experiences associated with persistent drought in rural New South Wales, Australia, and large-scale, open-cut coal mining. But it can be , including pollution and deforestation. The only good news, such as it is, is that some suggest solastalgia might have an adaptive benefit: like other “climate emotions”, talking about it may help people become more resilient.
Thinjection
“Are you tempted by a thinjection?” That was the question posed earlier this year in Women’s 91ɫƬ magazine, referring to a sensational new weight-loss drug called semaglutide (also known as Wegovy). The drug has attracted an immense amount of attention, not only as a result of endless speculation over which celebrities are using it, but also because “thinjections” have the potential to make obesity history.
It works by mimicking the effects of a hormone called GLP-1, which slows the passage of food through the gut and acts on the brain to suppress appetite. It is remarkably effective: in clinical trials, a weekly injection caused participants to lose 15 per cent of their body weight on average within 68 weeks. New and improved versions, which require fewer injections, are already in the pipeline.
Liz Else welcomes your parasocial interactions
