‘Kindness’ named as Children’s Word of the Year

“Artificial intelligence” has lost out to “Kindness” as the 2024 Children’s Word of the Year.

More than 3,000 children across the UK aged six to 14 were asked for their word of the year, with “kindness”, “artificial intelligence” and “conflict” among the most common suggestions, according to publisher Oxford University Press (OUP).

These three words, along with three shortlisted slang words chosen from a a survey of 1,200 children, were then put to a vote by a further 2,000 children.

According to the research, 61% of children chose “kindness” as the Children’s Word of the Year, with some of them associating the word with mental health.

One child said that “it’s always important to be kind as a lot of people struggle with their mental health” while another said kindness is important “as you don’t know who is suffering”.

A quarter who were surveyed chose AI and 53% of the children who selected the word associated it with positive adjectives including “excited” and “optimistic”.

More than one in four surveyed for a slang word chose slay, which has appeared on the colloquial shortlist for the past two years.

The terms sigma and skibidi were voted as second and third choices respectively (16% and 15%), demonstrating the role of social media in influencing children’s vocabulary.

Andrea Quincey, director of early years and primary publishing at OUP, said: “It is so encouraging that kindness has been voted — by a considerable majority — as the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year for 2024.

“We know from previous years that young people are very conscious of the big issues that can divide us as a society and attuned to the important role which language can play in bringing people together.

“This choice suggests something more personal: an awareness of mental health issues and of the hidden challenges others may be facing.

“It tells us that empathy and tolerance and the language we use matter, and that kindness is not only a solution to so many problems but is something everyone and anyone can do to make a difference.”

“Queen” was named word of the year for 2022, following the death of the King’s mother Elizabeth II, while the word of the year for 2023 was “climate change”.