Each year brings new terms to the universal vocabulary. While we wait for the words of 2023, the words we were obsessed with in 2022 thankfully no longer relate to Covid, like those of 2021. They largely reflect our parallel lives on social media. Here is our tour of the most popular neologisms of the year.

At first, it’s a way of cheering. We agree that “Yaaaaasss!” is more expressive than “Yes”, right? Yass was first documented when an absolute fan of Lady Gaga happened to come face to face with her and couldn’t help but scream on camera: “Yaaass Gaga!” Yaaasss is a heartfelt cry to cherish, admire, encourage, adore, or rave about something. As a result, Yassify now means the action of making someone or something more beautiful, more spectacular, more adorable. It especially applies to beautifying filters that are added to a photo in several layers. To Yassify means to transfigure. We might not recognize you, but “Yaaaasss!” you’re a Queen!

Derived from “nepotism”, it refers to a celeb’s children who do not have to make any effort to have flourishing careers. One example is Lily-Rose Depp, the daughter of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp, who became a star model for Chanel without having to go through the casting process. Lourdes Leon, Madonna’s daughter, defends herself of having taken advantage of her mother’s fame to become a model. She swears she worked hard to earn her place even if she acknowledges being privileged. Now, that’s a word that makes people cringe and unleashes torrents of resentment.

 Sometimes we dream of being able to make no effort, to dive into our phones instead of participating in conversations, to eat whenever and whatever we want, to wake up in the afternoon, to neglect all our duties. This evil spread widely during Covid, as the lockdown triggered a process of de-socialization and a return to the wild. The temptation was still strong in 2022, hence the success of the expression “Goblin mode”, or the idea that you’ll feel disgusted with yourself, but you’ll still disappear.

You’ve heard it on TikTok and potentially across every other social media platform out there. But what exactly does it mean? It is a slang term used to describe someone or something’s look or vibe with a positive ironic connotation, derived from the phrase “giving X vibes.” For example, “It’s giving chic” would positively describe someone as having chic style.