Slovenians have voted genocide (genocid) as the word that marked 2024 the most, while the sign language gesture of the year is that for peace, and preturizem (overtourism) became the new word of the year 2024.

The word, new word and the sign language gesture of the year were declared by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) at an event in Ljubljana on 7 January.

Over 6,200 people cast their votes to select the word of the year among eleven words shortlisted by a judging panel from among more than 600 words put forward by members of the public.

Genocide won 2,801 votes, to come ahead of omrežnina, the electricity network charge, which surged as a new system kicked in last year, and dvoživka, the word for amphibian which has become to be used as a derogatory term for a doctor involved in dual practice.

The Word of the Year is not a competition, but a selection of words that best illustrate the topics most talked about that year, Simona Klemenčič, one of the judges and the head of the campaign, said.

Although the campaign avoids timeless words, they decided to shortlist genocide because of the sharp increase in the use of the word in recent decades and last year in particular.

Gregor Pobežin, head of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Cultural History, noted that the word was coined by the ancient Romans, who themselves committed genocide several times in their history. He finds it sad that we are talking about genocide today.

The shortlist also included boiler, brutal, hybrid work, kitesurfing, [EU] commissioner, [the right to] disconnect, teachers, and son-in-law, a reference to US President-elect Donald Trump.

The judging panel selecting the finalists featured ZRC SAZU officials, a representative of the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija and a representative of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Clubs Association.

The panel also chose preturizem (overtourism) as the neologism, or the new word of the year, while the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Clubs Association picked the sign language gesture of the year.

The gesture for peace won the vote ahead of those for artificial intelligence and Mastercard, the sponsor of a campaign to expand the dictionary of Slovenian sign language gestures.

The word of the year has been selected annually since 2016 in a campaign headed by the ZRC SAZU Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language.

The 2023 word of the year was calamity while the gesture for solidarity was the sign language gesture of the year, both selected in the wake of devastating floods that hit Slovenia that summer.

The word of 2022 was firefighter, in the aftermath of the worst wildfire in Slovenia's history that summer, while the Covid-19 pandemic informed the words of the preceding two years with PCT, the abbreviation for the recovered-vaccinated-tested pass, picked in 2021 and quarantine in 2020.