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Each year, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster, Britain-based Collins Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and others, select a “word of the year,” often a neologism, but not always. Gaslighting[1] (a form of psychological abuse) was the choice at M-W, while Collins chose permacrisis. The former was chosen because of the increase in lookups (up 1,740%), while the latter was selected, as it was applicable to a year that saw the first war in Europe in seventy-seven years, China’s increased aggression, and world-wide inflation. The OED selected three words, including my favorite – more a phrase than a word – goblin mode, which was also cited by Ben Zimmer in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. It refers to behavior that is “unapologetically lazy, slovenly, greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms.” It is often assigned to those who spend inordinate amounts of time on social media, as in my grandchild is in goblin mode.
I have been thinking of words and phrases – their origins, meanings, and appropriation by political opportunists, often leaving their opponents with the etymological dregs. Over the past few years, we have created a political alphabet soup: CRT, DEI, ESG, and BLM, reminding one of Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup agencies’ from the 1930s. But, unlike FDR’s agencies which actually put people to work, today’s alphabet soups have more in common with Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Words have assumed new meanings. Yesterday’s environmentalists have become today’s climate warriors. Information to some is misinformation to others. Should it be the state that decides what is accurate and what is not? Is it too much to ask Twitter users to be personally wary of conspiracy theories and to look out for offensive language – offensive to some but not to others? And what, for example, does the European Union means when it tells Twitter that it must apply “content moderation” to the posts it allows?
When I read of Larry Fink pontificating as to being socially responsible, I picture a greedy John Bull with a smirk on his face and a halo above his head. And the scam artist Samuel Bankman-Fried, a promoter of progressive fads, bills himself as an effective altruist. Is not an altruist already effective? Certainly, his investors and depositors who lost millions of dollars do not see him as altruistic.