

"Artificial intelligence" has lost out to"Kindness" as the 2024 Children's Word of the Year in Britain.
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 kind nessis 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.—PA Media/dpa
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