"Wildfire" voted Portugal's word of year

LISBON, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- "Wildfire" has been voted Portugal's Word of the Year, Porto Editora, the publishing house that promotes the contest, announced on Thursday.

Some 30,000 votes were received with "wildfire" garnering 37 percent support and "Affection" in second place with 20 percent of the vote.

Porto Editora revealed a ten-word shortlist on Dec. 1, 2017, and invited the Portuguese public to vote online throughout the month. Nominations were based on surveys of word use during the year and words searched for in the publisher's online dictionaries.

The full list was: affection; desertification; forest; gentrification; growth; independentist; pilgrim; wildfire; withholding; victor.

The word "affection" was an early favorite. It is regularly employed in relation to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the President of Portugal, whose popular presidency has been characterized by a will to meet and greet members of the general public.

"Victor" commemorated Portugal's triumph in the Eurovision Song Contest while "gentrification" referenced the complex changes that booming tourism and foreign property investment have brought to traditional neighborhoods in Lisbon and Porto particularly.

But 2017 will live long in the memory for a series of forest fires that raged through Portugal destroying hundreds of hectares and causing more than 100 fatalities. Thus "wildfire" was deemed to be the outstanding term of 2017 for topical reasons. Enditem