An exercise in exploitation
Iwas taking a couple of T-shirts down to the print shop to get ‘‘I identify as somebody’’ emblazoned across the front of them, when I heard that the Merriam-webster dictionary’s 2019 word of the year is ‘‘they’’. My ‘‘I identify as somebody’’ T-shirt would be a private protest about constantly being addressed as ‘‘luv’’ and (shudder) ‘‘dear’’. To me ‘‘luv’’ and ‘‘dear’’ are words a Coro Street publican uses when he talks to his regulars. ‘‘I identify as somebody’’ means that I am not just a dear, or a luv, I am somebody, while also referencing the current trend for gender identification.
Meanwhile, the Oxford Dictionary’s 2019 word of the year is ‘‘climate emergency’’, which is actually two words, while Dictionary.com’s word is ‘‘existential’’, made famous by Jean-paul Sartre before Greta Thunberg brought it back into use.
‘‘Climate emergency’’ and ‘‘existential’’ convey heightened societal alarm over the apocalyptic degradation and possible extinction of the planet, and have been used prolifically throughout the year.
Frankly, I find the word-of-the-year exercise exploitative because the words in question have no say in the matter. They (the words, rather than the gender neutral pronoun ‘‘they’’) were innocently going about their business as hard-working words before suddenly being plucked from obscurity to have their souls ripped out of them when they became ‘‘it’’ words.
Words and expressions wander in and out of fashion, such as ‘‘quid pro quo’’ – currently back in vogue after President Donald Trump and numerous pundits used it in regard to his dealings with the Ukrainian president.
‘‘Exculpate’’ was in the top 10 Merriam-webster Dictionary words of the year after Robert Mueller said Trump could not be exculpated of wrongdoing over Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Previously, I had never heard of ‘‘exculpate’’ and thought it sounded surgical, like the scooping out of liquid from a skull, because of the xcul bit (pronounced skull) and the pate (as in bald dome).
I would have expected to see ‘‘prorogation’’ put in an appearance as word of the year in the UK after it was activated by Boris Johnson when he lied to the Queen and illegally discontinued Parliament.
From the Hollywood dictionary, if there is such a thing, surely its 2019 word/s would have to be ‘‘digital fur’’ from the film flop of the year, Cats.
In New Zealand we haven’t got a word of the year, but we did see the return of the phrase ‘‘an orchestrated litany of lies’’, famously uttered by Justice Peter Mahon. It was recently brought back to life in Stuff/rnz’s popular White Silence November podcast, made 40 years after the Erebus plane disaster.
Politically, this year, there hasn’t been a word or a particularly memorable phrase, though ‘‘Turnardern’’ appeared when bad-sport National Party supporters took to the bookshops and turned over, or hid, Michelle Duff’s biography, Jacinda Ardern: The Story Behind an Extraordinary
Leader, and any magazine with the prime minister on the cover.
As for new Kiwi slang words of the year, I have invented two for use during texting. Instead of saying ‘‘all good’’, which was ubiquitous for years, I text ‘‘coolio’’, meaning I approve and concur with my fellow textee. And the second – ‘‘ketchup?’’, to suggest an arrangement to catch up in the near future. And I must say I’m rather fond of ‘‘awse’’, short for awesome.
So as we enter the new year, I hope you’ve had an awse statutory holiday break, and don’t go getting any ideas about the prorogation of coolio plans for a ketchup in the new year.