As a reflection of the year that was, amongst other front-runners for 2015 were words including ‘terrorism’, ‘take in’ and ‘left’.
Voting closed on 31 December and the winning word was revealed on Monday morning at around 11am at the José Saramago Municipal Library in Loures.
‘Refugee’ won the top spot with 31 percent of the votes, cast online by more than 20,000 participants.
Monday morning’s ceremony was attended by Rui Marques of the Platform for Refugee Support.
Mr. Marques said the choosing of the word ‘refugee’ as the Word of the Year reveals an “attitude of acceptance, respect and empathy.”
The nation’s choice “clearly implies an attitude of openness, acceptance, respect, empathy and ability to perceive the drama” of refugees, Rui Marques stressed in comments to Lusa News Agency.
“I want to praise the choice of Portuguese who gave relevance to the theme and to this word because it stresses the human dimension of the tragedy. When we talk about refugees we are talking about people, concrete stories, situations of suffering, but also of enormous resilience, of wanting to find hope, and the ability to fight for their future”, he added.
In his opinion, Mr. Marques believes it would have been “sorry news if the country had chosen ‘Terrorism’ [as the Word of the Year] because it would mean Portuguese were being held captive by the fear and negative impact that terrorism had and has on all of us.”
He says he would now like to see the choice of the word ‘Refugee’ evolve into ‘acceptance’ over the course of 2016.
Porto Editora’s Word of the Year was first launched in 2009, and in 2014 the winning word was ‘corruption’.