I knocked off work early last year so I missed a few things.

Long service leave and the need to detach from bad news meant that I got to live in a bubble for a month or two and I loved it. I played hours of Marco Polo in the pool with my boys and read a few books.

Fantasised about moving to Italy, said cheers a lot and finally (after 17 years) bought a new couch. Now I’m back to work and my routine has completely changed.

This year I’m hosting the Evenings show on ABC Radio Brisbane and it’s broadcast all over Queensland. That means more fun, potentially more cyclones and guaranteed brilliant characters calling in for a chat on air.

Like Rusty, who’s a pearl farmer on Turtle Head Island. He and his wife were playing scrabble and drinking red wine when they dialled in for a yack. That’s a good word isn’t it. Yack. Depending on the circumstances. I once had a yack in Munich at Octoberfest. Yuck.

Words are my trade on air and on paper – well, screen really – but I still say paper. But I missed one Word of the Year in the 2023 mop-up because I was too busy yelling “Fish out of Water”. Now it’s time to resurface in the real world and return to work with some new lingo.

My first week back on the radio last week started with a chat to language Professor Roly Sussex. He’s like Santa Claus with words. Roly rattled through the Words of the Year as declared by various dictionaries.

Rizz (if you’ve got it you know it) and Matildas (obviously by the Australian Oxford dictionary) are both top choices. And then Roly revealed a word that I found so familiar I realised I knew it. I just didn’t have a word for it.

Enshittification. The American Dialect Society selected the word to describe the gradual deterioration of online platforms. Hello Twitter. You got shitter. Not a real word I know but it’s just how you feel sometimes. I still can’t say X.

According to the Australian Library and Information Association enshittification is a process where commercial platform providers lock in users, eliminate competition and use the resulting lack of choice to reallocate benefits away from users and towards the platform’s shareholders instead.

Feel free to use this evocative word in whatever context you need. Here are a few times where I’ve been tempted to co-opt the concept: any day with a max temp over 35. Ditto debilitating humidity.

Dealing with a bank, telco, social media platform or Government agency online. Mouldy bread, car door dints, dog doo on footpaths. All of these things have at various times made me feel enshitty.

I gave Roly a new dictionary to start 2024. It’s called Fake Swears – Filthy Expletives that are 102% clean. Swear words you can use in any company.

If you’ve been watching the tennis perhaps you could just reach for a surname that suits the occasion. Outraged – try Ostapenko! In disbelief – Djokovic! Kick your toe – Agassi! Fuming – Osaka!

I like inventing new words. What’s the opposite of enshittification? Enrizzification? More of whatever the antonym is in 2024 please.