Grammar Moses: This has been an interminable, irredeemable year
If you had to choose one word to sum up 2020, what would it be?
Interminable?
Irredeemable?
Abominable?
Guano?
These are definitely in my Top 10. Come to think of it, these are probably the one-word reviews of my column on Twitter.
But if you work for Merriam-Webster and you have a tradition of coming up with a Word of the Year, you look beyond yourself and do some statistical analysis of words that people are looking up in your online dictionary in increasing numbers.
It should not be surprising, then, that "pandemic" is its Top of the Pops for 2020.
We all know what a pandemic is by now. But, before March, did you really know the difference between a "pandemic" and an "epidemic"? Just before St. Patrick's Day is when the World Health Organization termed the coronavirus a "pandemic" and everything went to, well, guano.
In its infancy, when it was still causing an uproar just in China, the virus was an epidemic. But when it had spread to Europe and the U.S. and everywhere else, it became a pandemic (the "pan-" prefix meaning "all." Think of the Pan-American Games and "panacea").
Merriam-Webster's 2019 word of the year was "they." In 2018, it was "justice." In 2017, "feminism."
My guess is that the good people at M-W recently were kicking themselves that they burned "surreal" in 2016, because that might be the best descriptor for this weird and awful year.
The rest of Merriam-Webster's Top 5 shakes out like this:
2. Defund. I still don't think there is much consensus on what the word means in the context of "defund the police."
3. Mamba. Hard to believe, but Kobe Bryant died in 2020. "Mamba" was his sobriquet, taken from the name of a particularly fast and lethal African snake.
4. Kraken. When the new Seattle NHL team released its name this year, people wondered what the heck a Kraken is. It is a mythological sea beast, and it's nipping at the heels of the New Orleans Pelicans for worst professional sports team name.
5. Quarantine. As with "defund," there seems to be a lot of confusion over what "quarantine" really means: Do I need to live alone in my basement and use a bucket for a toilet, taking food deliveries through the laundry chute for 14 days, or must I hang out with only my closest 20 pals at the corner bar for the next six months?
Pareidolia
As I was making a glorious grilled ham and cheese sandwich the other day, I removed a slice of Swiss from the packet and immediately was drawn back to the '90s, when I clacked away on a monstrous IBM computer, storing whatever I needed on 5¼-inch floppy disks.
If you read this column regularly, you know that's called "pareidolia."
Write carefully!
• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.