The plague of pandemic words
Even if it ended tomorrow, the pandemic, in one manner or other, will be with every one of us for the rest of our days. In big ways: the impact of loved ones lost, lives put on hold, devastated economies, and derailed careers.
But also in things less obvious like losing forever the certainty that if you are a good person, who lives the right way, one day a plague will not descend upon you.
Now that is weighty stuff, and we have entered our second wave, so, before you turn the page, know that I am here today on a matter that is not life-altering, but still needs to be talked about.
It is the words and figures of speech that have emerged in the pandemic era that, the longer this goes on, the less we ever want to hear again.
Most because they are freighted with so much emotion that it is hard to imagine them ever having another association for us beyond the coronavirus; others because we just don’t like the way they trip off the tongue, others for other reasons altogether.
When I asked my colleagues at the The Chronicle Herald to name pandemic-inspired verbiage that they have heard enough of, the hands went up.
Socially distant, said one. Others chimed in with new normal, can’t let our guard down, be kind to one another, contact tracing, and abundance of caution.
A pragmatic parent said toilet paper, while someone else added chin diaper, a term with which I was unfamiliar, and a third singled out superspreader, which she “always hoped would be a cheese whiz.”
I personally could do without ever having to hear the diminutive COVID again, just because. Same goes with quarantine, pre-existing condition, asymptomatic, and incubation period, all clinical terms that I never heard much before but now simply can’t seem to get away from.
In addition to some of the aforementioned, the website Dictionary.com’s list of hated pandemic terms and phrases includes unprecedented, uncertain, and trying — all used to describe our times — essential (as in workers), and speaking moistly, according to the website a particularly loathed term coined by our prime minister.
I’m not expecting to still be hearing those particular Justin Trudeau-coined words years from now.
SOME WORDS LIVE ON
Neither does Daniel Currie Hall, a linguist who teaches at Saint Mary’s University, whom I called Friday to ask why some words and phrases find their way into the common parlance and others are never heard of again.
First, he explained, I had to understand that words come about in different ways. In the 16th century, for example, it was common for people to combine parts of Greek and Latin words, as a way to show off their education. Today, on the other hand, words are often formed by blending others together (motel, staycation, blog, mocktail.)
Sometimes, he went on, something lingers for no better reason than the person who first uttered it had personal cache, or that he words or phrase is simply elegant.
But Hall’s first principle for linguistic longevity is that a word or phrase must “fill a need.”
He puts it this way: Is there something that we will continue to need to talk about, for which here is no satisfactory way to talk about other than using a particular word or phrase? (Think, for example, social-distancing.)
If so, said word or phrase will probably live on out of necessity.
On the other hand, said Hall, there are words that are memorable for a moment, because they are funny, or are “cultural touchstones” of a particular time and place, like Justin Trudeau’s speaking moistly.
These are less likely to endure. So are words that are too long, or words that are easily mistaken for others.
Not so for words that already existed but perhaps were seldom spoken — other than by an epidemiologist during a pandemic — that suddenly “become part of a wider popular experience.”
Hall said one way to gauge whether a word or phrase has legs is how it is used. If it gets thrown around as a way of demonstrating that the user is in the know, its days are likely numbered.
Conversely, if you hear people using it in a natural “un-selfconscious way” expect to hear more of it in the future.
By the time this is over we may have a lot of those.