'Muffin top', 'share plate' and 'Halal Snack Pack' are just a few of the 'words' awarded honorary status by the Macquarie Dictionary in recent years. Until the dignity of the dictionary is restored, Ben Pobjie is enforcing a 'lexiban'.

The Halal Snack Pack is a marvellous thing.

The meaty, saucy, chip-laden dish is convenient, tasty, and brings people of diverse backgrounds together in a shared spirit of deliciousness. We can all be glad that the Halal Snack Pack has entered our lives.

But what the Halal Snack Pack is not is a word.

Notice those pauses after "Halal" and "Snack"? They're a dead giveaway that the name of this toothsome treat is in fact three words, making "Halal Snack Pack" what we professional wordsmiths call "a phrase".

Which is why it is galling in the extreme to learn that Macquarie Dictionary this week announced Halal Snack Pack as its 2016 People's Choice Word of the Year.

A 'kick in the guts' for lexicography

This is a real kick in the guts for anyone who cherishes and respects the beauty and dignity of language, and not just because any reasonable person would agree that the word most representative of the past year is "s**t".

The dictionary, the very entity that is meant to be our guardian against lexicographical blasphemy, is clearly spitting in the face of the very concept of the word, and boasting about it publicly.

(It's all very well to say that the people voted for Halal Snack Pack as Word of the Year, but the people would probably vote for Grant Denyer as Prime Minister if they had the chance: that's why we have people whose job it is to make sure they don't get that chance.)

What's more, the dictionary committee itself chose "fake news" as the official 'Word of the Year', a fitting choice given no news could be more fake than the news that "fake news" is now considered a word, rather than, as the evidence of our own damn eyes would have it, two words.

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Not that we should be surprised.

This year's abuse of the once-prestigious Word of the Year title is no new fad, but just the latest in a procession of such abuses by Big Dictionary.

Last year's Word of the Year, for example, was "captain's call".

In 2014 the People's Choice went to "share plate".

Back in 2012 the committee's choice was "phantom vibration syndrome", which is not only not a word, I don't even think it's a thing.

As far back as 2006, Macquarie was offending the sensibilities of decent word-lovers everywhere: their Word of the Year then was "muffin top".

This is sheer vocabularial vandalism

It's not just that this annual attack on the integrity of language acts as a semantic acid, gradually eating away at meaning: by elevating phrases — or random collection of words such as "phantom vibration syndrome" — the dictionary mafia is crowding out actual words that could be celebrated instead, and thus holding back the very development of our language.

Until our dictionaries start taking the responsibility of the Word of the Year award seriously, we must declare a boycott (or "lexiban"). ( Pixabay.com )

What if, instead of vomiting up "muffin top" or "pod slurping" (2007 Word of the Year — explanations welcome) as their lexicographical standard-bearers, dictionaries used their power for good, to publicise exciting new words that can expand our understanding of the world?

What if this year, the Macquarie Word of the Year was "ambiconvivialism", meaning "the feeling of not wanting to go to a party while also resenting the fact you weren't invited"?

Now that would actually enrich the wonderful English tongue.

What if instead of expecting us to get excited about Halal Snack Pack, a non-word that we already all knew about, Macquarie used its platform to introduce us to the beautiful word "smugulant", meaning "any public servant who thinks they're better than you"?

There are many other deserving words, for example:

Virtublubber: weight gained as a result of eating poorly because you've been working long hours Hominidensity: the inability to know the difference between monkeys and apes. Sartorioception: the sensation of waking up in a dark room and thinking there's someone in the room watching you but actually it's just some clothes hanging up. Autogerontology: the study of why old people drive like that. Gloomhole: the one place in the food court that never has any customers.

These and many more words could be valuable parts of public discourse, if only they were given the chance and not crowded out by share plates and muffin tops.

To see our vocabulary hobbled and degraded is appalling: to see it done by the very institution that we trusted to glorify and nurture it is unacceptable.

Until our dictionaries start taking the responsibility of the Word of the Year award seriously, we must declare a blanket boycott (or "lexiban") on all dictionaries.

For the sake of language itself, it is time to resist.