Did it explain why these are its favourites or is this an arbitrary list? Did its staff vote on this do you suppose? Were other words considered and discarded? Are we intended to try to use these words as frequently as possible during the year? Or perhaps M-W plans various events during the year to popularise them? Anyway, is a dictionary allowed to practise favouritism? Does this explain why certain words fall out of use and then disappear; does that happen because the dictionaries didn't like those words? After all, if you have favourites then you can have pet hates too. A malicious dictionary could do a lot of damage to an innocent word.

It's a tantalising piece of information and we should be told more!