M-W 2021 Word of the Year: Vaccine

I guess that should not be a surprise.  Vaccine is the Word-of-the-Year chosen by Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  According to Merriam-Webster the word “vaccine” shot up in usage this year and defined the year as a word, driven by two phenomena: the savior of society from the coronavirus (or Covid-19, whichever term you prefer for the agent of the pandemic) and the politics associated with vaccination, either from those who embraced vaccination and those who resisted.  It is true.  The word “vaccine” was on our lips and in our ears throughout the year. 

First a definition.  

1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as

 

a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)a trivalent influenza vaccineoral polio vaccineMany vaccines are made from the virus itself, either weakened or killed, which will induce antibodies to bind and kill a live virus. Measles vaccines are just that, weakened (or attenuated) measles viruses.— Ann Finkbeiner et al.… a tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine might be recommended for wound management in a pregnant woman if [greater than or equal to] 5 years have elapsed … .— Mark Sawyer et al.In addition the subunit used in a vaccine must be carefully chosen, because not all components of a pathogen represent beneficial immunological targets.— Thomas J. Matthews and Dani P. Bolognesi

 

b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)… Moderna's coronavirus vaccine … works by injecting a small piece of mRNA from the coronavirus that codes for the virus' spike protein. … mRNA vaccine spurs the body to produce the spike protein internally. That, in turn, triggers an immune response.— Susie Neilson et al.The revolutionary messenger RNA vaccines that are now available have been over a decade in development. … Messenger RNA enters the cell cytoplasm and produces protein from the spike of the Covid-19 virus.— Thomas F. CozzaViral vector vaccines, another recent type of vaccine, are similar to DNA and RNA vaccines, but the virus's genetic information is housed in an attenuated virus (unrelated to the disease-causing virus) that helps to promote host cell fusion and entry.— Priya Kaur

NOTE: Vaccines may contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) designed to enhance the strength and duration of the body's immune response.

2: a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseasesThe U.S. Army is also testing a ricin vaccine and has reported success in mice.— Sue Goetinck Ambrose… many of the most promising new cancer vaccines use dendritic cells to train the immune system to recognize tumor cells.— Patrick Barry

Notice that 1b sub definition: “a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance…”  Those are the new vaccines addressing Covid-19 that have been in controversy.  That definition of vaccine was updated this year to include that sub definition.  Until this year with these Covid vaccines I had no idea of this concept, but as I understand it these forms of vaccines have been in development for a while.  In their announcement for Word-of-the-Year, Merriam-Webster described the definition change and the controversy surrounding the word:

 

In everyday use, words are useful tools that communicate assertions, ideas, aspirations, and uncertainties. But they can also become vehicles for ideological conflict.

 

This is what happened to vaccine in 2021. The promising medical solution to the pandemic that upended our lives in 2020 also became a political argument and source of division. The biggest science story of our time quickly became the biggest debate in our country, and the word at the center of both stories is vaccine.

 

Hopes for cures and treatments of COVID-19 began as soon as the disease began to spread. Research into a new kind of vaccine containing messenger RNA, or mRNA, genetic material rather than an inactivated form of the virus was accelerated. After decades of studies conducted for application to diseases such as influenza, Ebola, and rabies, this new type of mRNA vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus was rapidly developed, tested, and manufactured for broad use, with the first doses being administered in the U.S. in December 2020.

 

The use of a vaccine that triggers an immune response in an entirely new way required that Merriam-Webster revise and expand its entry for the word, which the company did in May. The definition, which formerly read “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease,” was replaced with the following:

So did you choose to get vaccinated?  Were you forced to get vaccinated?  Or have you been rebellious and fought to be exempt?  From what I read, vaccines have been lifesaving.  The hospitals are full of the unvaccinated.  We at my family have all chosen to be vaccinated.  I wrote a post about a number of friends who succumbed to the virus, “Covid-19, My New York Experience” before the vaccines.  Since then I had one of my closest friends, Joe, pass away as well, but Joe was vaccinated.  But Joe was rather vulnerable given all his other health issues. 

Here’s a video on the M-W Word of the Year. 

 

So how did vaccine register so high in Merriam-Webster’s awareness?  They explain from their announcement:

 

Interest in the definition of this word was intense in the past year: lookups for vaccine increased 601% year-over-year from 2020. But interest in the word has been high since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with much discussion of the funding, development, testing, and ultimate distribution of the vaccines occurring in 2020. The prominence of the word vaccine in our lives in this era becomes even more starkly clear when we compare 2021 to 2019, a period in which lookups for the word increased 1048%.

 

Lookups of vaccine, already very high all year, jumped by 535% in August, long after discussions about vaccines began taking place in the press and widespread distribution in parts of the world were well underway. A number of stories in August show that discussions about policy, approval, and vaccination rates—rather than the vaccine itself—sent people to the dictionary. During this period, New York and California instituted vaccine mandates for health care workers; a federal mandate was announced for nursing home staff; an announcement of plans for booster shots for the general public in the U.S. prompted condemnations of inequities in vaccine distribution; and full FDA approval for Pfizer’s vaccine was granted.

 

This new higher rate of lookups since August has remained stable throughout the late fall, showing not just a very high interest in vaccine, but one that started high and grew during the course of 2021.

Other words which came up high on their list in 2021: Insurrection, Perseverance, Woke, Nomad, Infrastructure, Cicada, Murraya, Cisgender, Guardian, and Meta.  Their announcement goes through each one as to why it had heightened searches this year.  I guessed why for several but was surprised for the others. 

I leave you with one more video on the Word-of-the-Year, one that is more visual, from Asianet Newsable.

 

So if 2020’s Word-of-the-Year was “pandemic,” and 2021’s was “vaccine,” will 2022’s be “booster”?  Seems like the trend.

Literature in the News: “They,” The Word of the Year

Who comes up with these awards?  There really is a word of the year, awarded by the American Dialect Society (ADS).  

And the winner for 2016 is…

they: gender-neutral singular pronoun for a known person, particularly as a nonbinary identifier.

The award ceremony (actually a vote was held) was held at the Marriott Marquis, Washington D.C. on January 8^th. 

In its 26th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted for they used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun as the Word of the Year for 2015. They was recognized by the society for its emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often as a conscious choice by a person rejecting the traditional gender binary of he and she.

Presiding at the Jan. 8 voting session were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of MacMurray College and Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. Zimmer is also executive editor of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

The use of singular they builds on centuries of usage, appearing in the work of writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen. In 2015, singular they was embraced by the Washington Post style guide. Bill Walsh, copy editor for the Post, described it as “the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.”

There you go.  The impetus for the selection is tied to this mad, insane rush to destroy gender from our language and our lives.  So if you’re confused, let me give you an example.  Normally “they” is a plural noun for multiple subjects. 

Five horses crossed the road.  They neighed.

But to use it as a singular pronoun for a known person is distort common usage.  This is how we would normally use a singular pronoun:

John wants a sex change.  He has discussed it with his doctor and wife.

Here’s how the new usage would work:

John wants a sex change.  They has discussed it with his doctor and wife.

Makes sense?  Of course not.

John Hovatt II had a very passionate disapproval in the American Thinker with his article, “'They' is Destroying the English Language.”  

This new usage is politically-correct jargon that is being forced on the public. Singular they now refers to those sexually-confused individuals who do not wish to be called he or she. It has been determined that “they” can now refer to a “known person as a non-binary identifier.” Predictably newspapers like the Washington Post have already included this usage in their style books. In so doing, they (plural) have declared grammatical war upon the language.

It is war, but a dirty war. One cannot help but be struck by the utter mediocrity and cowardice of the august assembly of linguistic warriors. Had these linguists had a bit of courage they might have adopted any of the numerous “gender-neutral” ridiculous-sounding pronouns such as “jee,” “ney” and “thon” that have already been created by activists to promote their cause. They (plural) could even have gone farther by making up their own new pronouns and challenging the world to use a novel new creation to accommodate the sexually unsure.

Instead these jargonists prefer to take a perfectly good pronoun and strip it down to singularity. In so doing, they have mutilated, emasculated, and disfigured this faithful pronoun and emptied it of meaning. These pedantic paladins of political correctness hide behind the excuse that “they” already has some singular common usages as when used with words like “everyone.” This can be seen in a sentence: “Everyone likes their dogs.” However, this is purely a smokescreen in this dirty war to hide an agenda that uses languages as one of its most effective weapons.

Of course this only applies to a singular person who claims to not want to be identified by his gender.  From the ADS post:

While editors have increasingly moved to accepting singular they when used in a generic fashion, voters in the Word of the Year proceedings singled out its newer usage as an identifier for someone who may identify as “non-binary” in gender terms.

“In the past year, new expressions of gender identity have generated a deal of discussion, and singular they has become a particularly significant element of that conversation,” Zimmer said. “While many novel gender-neutral pronouns have been proposed, they has the advantage of already being part of the language.”

Which infuriates John Hovatt II further:

This development is truly tragic because such artificial impositions go against the very purpose of language. Language should give clarity to thought. Its beauty consists in its ability to define concisely and clearly. The richness of vocabulary comes from how well words express nuance and subtlety.

But singular they? All is muddled and confused. If you have one they and add another they do they become two theys or are theys simply they? No one really knows, nor do the linguists really care. They (plural) want to make a political statement and force upon the users the task of determining the context of the usage. It assumes the public is savy to the esoteric world of politically-correct jargon.

There is another reason why this usage of singular they is wrong. The principal purpose of language is to express the truth. Words are essential vehicles for uniting ideas to things -- a simple definition of truth. A man, for example, has an idea of what a cat is. When he sees the cat, he exclaims: Cat! The word communicates a truth to all those around him. It instantly unites the idea and the thing.

Now how is a person supposed to know when writing about most people that this particular person wants to be identified as a “non-binary, gender-neutral” person?  You can’t, so the default will ultimately be that all people will be referred to in a gender-neutral way.  Just when you thought modernity can’t get more insane, it does.

On Language: Donald Trump’s Mastery of Political Speech

First let me preface this that I am not a Donald Trump supporter.  Personally I think he’s a demagogue and opportunist.  I hope he does not win the Republican Primary, though some of the other candidates would also be problematic for other reasons.  This is not a political post, but a post on the use of language.  Don’t construe this as an endorsement of Trump in any way.

I have been amazed at the remarkable rise of Donald Trump.  He is a complete novice in the world of politics, and yet his rise has been incredible.  Everyone said he would come crashing down, and everyone keeps waiting for that moment that he does.  It now has been more than half a year and he hasn’t, and if anything he only seems to rise in the polls.  You can’t just say it’s because of demagogic positions.  He has rebuffed attacks and defended his positions masterfully.  Everyone has been baffled as to why he keeps rising, and all I could pinpoint to was that he connects with people.  That’s kind of general, but this analysis nailed it.  It’s Trump’s use of language.  What you’re going to see is Trump give a minute long answer to a question, and the analyst then broke it down to show how it works. 

Now that is fascinating.  Yes, the analysist was completely biased, and actually demeaning.  But that is irrelevant to the analysis. 

So what it comes down to is that Trump speaks the language of the common man, not the intellectual, not the overly educated, but the language of the guy on the street working through the issues and applying common sense.  It’s the language of common sense.  Whether the solutions to the problems are right or wrong, good or bad, is not the point.  The point is that through his language he has bonded with the listener, and bonding is the foremost element to politics. We support and vote for those we bond with, even above ideas.  Trump may be inexperienced in politics, but he is a natural.

I wanted to post this just prior to the debate on Thursday night, so you could listen to Trump speaking and pick up on his language techniques.  But I have just heard he will not participate in the debate.  Oh well, you’ll have to save it for another opportunity.

On Language: 2015 New Words in Oxford Dictionary

Actually this was only the a quarterly update of new words added to the great Oxford English Dictionary but for some reason this quarter seems to be make the news headlines.  A thousand words were added in this go around and here are a few highlights.

I think the word that’s making the most waves is “manspreading.”  Now I know a woman must have come up with this term.  I’ve heard so many women complain about it, including my wife.  “Do you need to do that?” my wife once said.  “Do you need to display them as if their some sort of prize?”  Why is it that men have to sit that way?  I don’t know, but it just comes natural.  Here’s the definition.

Manspreading, n.: the practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats.

“Brain fart” made the list and I have to say that’s been around a while.  People use it at work all the time. 

Brain fart, n.: (informal) a temporary mental lapse or failure to reason correctly.

Brain farts happen more frequently with age.

Then there’s “hangry,” a perfect word blend of which I know exactly how it feels.

Hangry, adj.: (informal) bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.

Don’t get in my way when I’m hangry.  A perfect reason for meetings not to extend into lunchtime. 

I came across “fat-shame” a few months ago on The Anchoress’s blog.  Apparently someone was fat-shamed and Anchoress took offense.

Fat-shame, v.: cause (someone judged to be fat or overweight) to feel humiliated by making mocking or critical comments about their size

I agree with Anchoress.  That’s not very kind.

Now “butt dial” is one I would never have guessed.  I don’t keep my cell in my back pocket and I try to avoid keeping it close to my body.  (Aren’t people afraid of getting butt cancer from the radio waves?)

Butt dial, v.: calling someone accidentally with your mobile phone in a rear pocket.

Now combine that with brain fart and you get a telepathic phone call that gives off a malodorous scent.

Now “spear phishing” is one I’ve come across at work as they try to provide computer and information protection training.

Spear phishing, n.: the fraudulent practice of sending emails ostensibly from a known or trusted sender in order to induce targeted individuals to reveal confidential information.

With the attempt to eliminate gender in this oh so wonderful, brave, new world, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with “Mx.”

Mx, n.: a title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female.

And with my statement above, then I can sense some of you want to get me through a “deradicalisation” process.

Deradicalisation, n.: the action or process of causing a person with extreme views to adopt more moderate positions on political or social issues.

No sir, it won’t work.  I’m a fixed radical to this secular culture.  I’m a Christian.  The horror.

Now really, do “cat cafes” really exist?

Cat cafe, n.: a cafe or similar establishment where people pay to interact with cats housed on the premises.

If anyone out there has the sudden need to play with a cat and wants to pay for it, I can charge a reasonable amount for you to come to my house.

Now I can go on and on with some of these new words.  I have to stop.  But there are more interesting words.  Go over to the Daily Mail’s article, who seemed to have the best piece on this,to see what fatberg, cakeage, fur baby, rando, and beer o’clock mean.  OK, one more, the sister word to beer o’clock.

Wine o’clock, n.: an appropriate time of day for starting to drink wine.

It’s always an appropriate time at my house to drink wine.  In fact I’m going over now for a glass.  Cheers.

On Language: Swear Words across America

OK, this is a strange post for two reasons.  One it involves words people shouldn’t say and it involves recent technology.

Can you believe there is a blog dedicated to swear and otherwise naughty words?  In this world where the virtual is more current than the real there is a blog titled, Strong Language: A Sweary Blog AboutSwearing,  The “About” dedicates the blog to “Linguists, lexicographers, and word nerds who like vulgarities.”  It goes on to say:

If vulgar language offends you, then thank you. You’re one of the people who help maintain the effectiveness of vulgarities. You will very likely be offended by the articles in this blog.

If vulgar language interests or entertains you, or is a constant source of solace or release, and if you like language in general, then come on in.

This blog gives a place for professional language geeks to talk about things they can’t talk about in more polite contexts. It’s a sweary blog about swearing.

LOL, now being that I grew up in the gutters of Brooklyn, NY, and have been well trained in the artful use of cussing words, I rather enjoyed the blog.  It might not be your thing, but feel free to peruse it if it interests you.

Now the reason I came to that blog was from a link that highlighted a recent post on the swear trends across the UnitedStates. 

Swearing varies a lot from place to place, even within the same country, in the same language. But how do we know who swears what, where, in the big picture? We turn to data – damn big data. With great computing power comes great cartography.

Jack Grieve, lecturer in forensic linguistics at Aston University in Birmingham, UK, has created a detailed set of maps of the US showing strong regional patterns of swearing preferences. The maps are based on an 8.9-billion-word corpus of geo-coded tweets collected by Diansheng Guo in 2013–14 and funded by Digging into Data.

So basically what the researcher did was tabulate the frequency of certain swear words by location using Twitter tweets. 

Interestingly enough, the ubiquitous four letter word that starts with “f”—you know what word I mean—seems to be more widely used on the two coasts of the country and less so in the middle.  That actually doesn’t surprise me.  I have not found it as frequent in the Midwest, but I am surprised that Californians use it as much as New Yorkers. 

Interestingly the “A-H” word—that word that is used inside cars for other drivers—is not in frequent use in the South, but as typical here in the Northeast, we love it.

But the South does use the “B” word way more than everywhere else in the country.  And not surprising they also use “damn” more frequently.  The Midwest did register high on the scale for “darn” and “gosh.”  You guys are such goody-too-shoes. 

There’s more and it’s a fascinating read, especially if you have traveled about the country and listened to linguistic diction.  Now I don’t know if the tweets are representative of oral speech trends, but it is an approach to mapping speech patterns.  

Literature in the News: The Languages of the World

Here is a very interesting article from the Washington Post: “The World’s Languages,in 7 Maps and Charts.”  The article provides a really fascinating breakdown of what the world speaks.  Here are a few highlights.

1.      There are 7,102 living languages in the world, and Asia and Africa by far have the most by continent.  Europe has the least.

2.      Of the 7.2 billion people of the world, two-thirds have these twelve languages as their native tongue: Chinese, Hindu-Urdu, English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Bengali, Portuguese, German, Japanese, French, and Italian.

3.      The number of countries that speak English is 101, the largest number.  Arabic is a distant second.

4.      English is the actual official language in 35 countries, of which the United States is not one of them.  The US does not have an official language.

5.      English is by far the most commonly learned language in countries that have other languages as their native.

There are lots of other interesting facts and worth going over to read it.

Notable Quote: On Poetic Language

The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.

     ~Gerard Manley Hopkins

That’s a great quote.  That’s what I believe poetic language is all about.  Now it could be arguable that Hopkins practiced it himself.  Certainly his language is heightened, but does he actually employ the current language of his day?  His language in many of his poems, though not all, is so heightened that it could be said that he crossed over into a language of another age, of either a passed age or of an age he created.

Literature in the News: New Words for Webster’s Dictionary

You can probably find an article in all the newspapers on the new words Webster’s is entering into their dictionary this year, but I went straight to the Webster’s website for the information.  
 

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., May 19, 2014—Hashtag, selfie, and tweep join over 150 new words and definitions added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary in 2014, available now in print and online at Merriam-Webster.com. These new additions to America's best-selling dictionary reflect the growing influence technology is having on human endeavor, especially social networking, once done mostly in person. 

Yes it seems computers, the internet, and other technologies are altering our language.  Until this year I had never heard of “hashtag” and “selfie,” and until now I had never heard of “tweep.”  What does it mean? “A person who uses the Twitter online message service to send and receive tweets.”  Did we really need such a word?  As you can see I’m not hip with all the new technology.  I’m barely capable of managing this blog, and half the time I’m screwing that up.  My brother is amazed that my wife and I don’t have a Smart Phone.  The only selfie I’ve taken is with the time delay on my camera.   

[Which reminds me.  I was on a business trip last week and at the airport in California (of course) there was this guy—oh about early twenties in age—and while on line to check in was taking selfies of himself, solo.  There was no one else with him.  When he took the first I thought he was just trying to record the moment, but then he took a selfie of himself every other minute for about twenty minutes.  What’s with that?  And no, it wasn't the President of the United States. ;)]  

Other words of note highlighted in the article are the following, with my commentary in parenthesizes: big data (as opposed to metadata?), catfish (akin to the internet lingo of phishing, spearphishing, and whaling), crowdfunding (another internet hijacking of the multitudes), fracking (a non computer technical term for a change), freegan (oh that makes me puke), gamification (they have a word for this?), pho (what if you just added orzo?), poutine (sounds rather vulgar and it is in a gastronomic sort of way), social networking (hasn’t this been around for years?), steampunk (I knew that one, it’s a literary genre), turducken (this had to be thought up down south on someone’s peanut farm), Yooper (hey, I know at least one Yooper!).  I’ve hyperlinked them if in case my commentary made you curious.  

Ok, now I can go around and use all these hip new words and all the kids will think I’m cool.  Maybe I’ll even start taking selfies of myself.