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Truth in advertising: The Web of Language Distinguished Usage Panel, charged each year with picking the Word of the Year, consists entirely of me.

Black humor, I think. The author is ruefully noting that, while this usage has existed for hundreds of years, it manages to keep dropping out of fashion only to be reinvented in a new generation.

I find it interesting that a joke article has a better choice for Word of the Year than the OED's actual Word of the Year (the emoji U+1F602, "FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY").