COVID-19 has expanded our vocabulary
In the last year we've all learned more new words than we have since childhood.
It started with coronavirus, which sounded like a beer, so we unlearned it for COVID-19, which sounded like a planet from Star Trek.
Pretty soon we'd learned social distancing, asymptomatic, confinement, deconfinement, reconfinement and “flatten the curve.”
With lockdowns came isolationships, covidivorces and more recently aerosols, variants and only-in-quebec curfews.
On the plus side, we now drink quarantinis, do quaranbaking and use our COVID savings for an online shopping spendemic.
And sorry for that brief pundemic.
Still, our limited new COVID vocabulary doesn't hold a forbidden birthday candle to Germany, a country that finds exactly the right word for everything because they just combine several words to create new ones.
Take schadenfreude ( joy in another's misfortune) or kummerspeck (grief bacon) — the weight you gain after an emotional breakup.
Or Betäu bungs mitt elvers ch reibungsvero rd nu n g—a regulation requiring a prescription for an anaesthetic.
Not surprisingly, the Germans have already invented more than 1,200 pandemic words to describe almost everything we've experienced the past year — from coronaangst and coronafrisur (corona haircut) to coronaspeck, the weight you gain during lockdown.
In English, we now call that “fattening the curve.”
Some fabulous new German COVID terms include:
Todesküsschen (death kiss) — A scary word for our two-cheek kiss.
Maskentrottel (mask idiot) — Anyone wearing a mask indoors, under their nose.
Hamsterkauffers (hamster-buyers) — People who stockpile food, like hamsters stuffing a winter's supplies into their cheeks.
But don't try storing 300 rolls of toilet paper that way.
Germany has also invented the perfect word to describe how Montrealers now spend much time: At Ö ff nu n gs disk us ion-org is es, defined as“orgies of discussions about when to relax lockdowns.”
That's also the only orgy still allowed in Quebec, unless perhaps you're in a dark porno cinema, which has been legally permitted to open since March break.
Face it, there are countless COVID nuances English words don't quite capture, so why not invent German-style compound words in English?
For instance, let's create a word like sidewalk-sidestep-syndrome, the irrational fear of getting COVID from someone momentarily passing you on a sidewalk.
Your brain might know that's scientifically near impossible, but your heart still skips a beat.
Likewise for elevator-airshare-angst, where you turn your back on another passenger, then hold your breath hoping your floor gets dinged before you do.
People overly frightened of these situations should be called “coughin'-dodgers.”
How about mail-touching-dread-disorder for that period last year when we were terrified to open any envelope until two days had passed? Science now tells us mail is safe, since COVID rarely transmits by touch.
However, Toronto real estate agents say there's a trend for new homes with a special room to quarantine packages 24 hours. Apparently it's called an Amazon room. Perfekt!
Another useful new term could be overwashed-hands-syndrome or uber-handwaschen-syndrom in German, at least according to Google Translate.
It's that weary feeling you get at the fifth straight store you've entered that insists you sanitize your hands, although you've already done it at the other four and haven't touched a thing.
This tempts some people to do a “fakewash” (falschwaschen), where they pretend to stick a hand under the dispenser, while the weary sanitation bouncer pretends not to see.
When entering a store you may experience meshugenah-maskmist-blindness, when your glasses suddenly fog up and you stumble over a supermarket cart and into a nearby vegetable bin.
After you're in the store a while you may also get masked-sex partner-shame( or sex partner mask es chan de in Google German ), the embarrassment you feel when you don't recognize your own lover in a mask. Germans might feel something like restaurantessen nostalgie, a longing for a near-forgotten place where waiters brought food to your table and then cleaned up.
Personally I get restaurantessen-delicatessen-nostalgia every time I pass Schwartz's shuttered dine-in doors.
I also suffer from phantom-handshake-syndrome (or phantom-hand-schlagen in Google German).
My hand mentally lurches out to shake an old friend's hand, but my actual hand remains safely in my pocket, two metres away.
The human handshake once expressed intimacy, now it's so menacing you need a consent form to pat your brother's shoulder.
Some people may also have desperate-for-a-hug-displacement-disorder and find themselves obsessively hugging dogs, cats, pet turtles, birds — even the fridge when there's nothing alive nearby to hug.
And which Quebecer doesn't get repetitive-day-after-day-jàvu, where you feel you've lived today's exact routine more often than Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, that Monday through Sunday are indistinguishable because every day is Blursday?
The latest German COVID words are impfneid, “to be jealous of people who've been vaccinated,” and impfdrängler, “someone who jumped the vaccine queue.”
But what recent feelings are we having in Quebec apart from vaccination-anticipation-elation-and-frustration?
Last week, my column questioning the curfew sparked almost 2,500 online shares and several hundred emails, almost all agreeing the curfew was scientifically ineffective and should be lifted.
Obviously, many Quebecers are suffering from undo-the-curfew-claustrophobia-complex. I sure hope the government finds a cure before we're all kaput.
Not surprisingly, the Germans have already invented more than 1,200 pandemic words to describe almost everything we've experienced the past year.