Word of the year poll: Guardian readers describe 2020 as 'shit'

When we asked readers what they thought of 2020 in a single word, they didn’t hold back.

With 6,185 responses so far, the most frequent response was “shit” (261) followed by “fucked” (208) and “exhausting” (111).

Here, you can see the results for the top 100 (or top 50 for smaller screens):

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However most of our readers are much more optimistic about 2021, with the most frequent response “better” (774) and “hopeful” (519):

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If you haven’t responded to the poll you can do so here. We’ll keep it open for another couple of weeks and do a final update to the results when we close it.