This Is Why the UK Always Seems So Much Smarter Than the US

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The Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year is “omnishambles,” while the Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year is…”GIF.”

We can’t even agree on how to pronounce GIF!

The British runners-up underscore our cultural differences as well; “mummy porn,” for example, sounds a little stranger to the Yankee ear than it probably did to the OED judges.

Lauren O'Neal is an editorial assistant at the Rumpus and an MFA student at San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in publications like Slate, The Hairpin, and Corium Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter at @laureneoneal. More from this author →