“Manifest” has been picked as Cambridge Dictionary’s phrase of the yr for 2024.
Popstar Dua Lipa and world-famous gymnast Simone Biles have each spoken about manifesting their very own success within the trendy sense of the time period.
The time period has gained traction on social media and was seemed up virtually 130,000 instances on the Cambridge Dictionary web site this yr.
Lexicographers mentioned the time period “to manifest” has developed to imply “to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen”.
Wendalyn Nichols, publishing supervisor of the Cambridge Dictionary, mentioned the usage of the phrase manifest had “widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time”.
Definition of manifest
verb
To make use of strategies akin to visualisation and affirmation that will help you think about attaining one thing you need, within the perception that doing so will make it extra prone to occur.
However regardless of its rising recognition, Dr Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology at Cambridge College, mentioned the thought of constructing one thing occur by “manifesting” it had no scientific validity.
He mentioned it was what psychologists name “magical thinking” or the “general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us”.
Dr van der Linden added there was good analysis on the worth of optimistic considering and aim setting – however pressured this was completely different from manifesting.
The likes of Dua Lipa have spoken publicly about manifesting. The singer mentioned she manifested headlining Glastonbury earlier in life when she achieved her aim this summer season.
Final yr’s Cambridge phrase of the yr was “hallucinate”.
How has the that means of manifest modified over time?
The phrase manifest, borrowing from Latin and French, was first used as an adjective that means ‘simply seen or apparent’ and appeared within the work of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1380 – “It is cleer and manyfest that it is propre to the devyne thought.”
When Shakespeare later used the phrase in his work The Service provider Of Venice, it was nonetheless an adjective and meant ‘proven clearly, by way of indicators or actions’.
He wrote: “For it appears, by manifest proceeding, that indirectly, and directly too, thou hast contriv’d against the very life of the defendant…”
By 1793, manifest was getting used as a noun and meant ‘an official listing of individuals and items carried on a ship’.
A number of a long time later, manifest took on a brand new dimension as a verb, that means ‘to look’ – extra just like the modern-day utilization – however in relation to a ghost or spirit.
By the twentieth century, being utilized in The St Joseph Observer, the time period resembled the phrase that’s so in style on TikTok and different social media platforms.
