Shaheer Ahmed
Rohana Khattak, a sixteen-year-old from Islamabad, won the New York Times competition with her coinage “oblivionaire,” which refers to a billionaire who chooses to ignore the imbalance and unfairness that his or her money creates.
The new English world is a mix of “oblivious” and “billionaire”.
Congratulations to Rohana Khattak, a Pakistani teenager, for inventing the word. https://t.co/TiklBp1lAh
— Masood Khan (@Masood__Khan) April 5, 2022
Rohana also provided an example of how oblivionaire might be utilised in a sentence:
“Gen Z’s outrage against so-called oblivionaires who disregard global concerns is exploding on social media, with many global and political personalities taking note.”
We live in an era when numerous global disasters are occurring at the same time, and inequality is so extreme that, while millions of children are starving to death, others have more money than they can spend. This gross disparity is not receiving enough attention, and we need a vocabulary to identify those who, in the lap of luxury, abdicate responsibility for the millions of people suffering and in misery throughout the world.
In the New York Times “February Vocabulary Challenge: Invent a Word” competition, a lot of teenagers from all over the world came up with new words. In the “Invent a Word” challenge, there were a lot of different words that people came up with. Only 24 words were chosen, and Rohana Khattak was the winner.
We are grateful to Rohana Khattak and wish her the best of luck in the future because we know she will make us proud.
