By Paula Thelwell
EVERY year, the English language becomes richer as new words, in common parlance, are officially recognised and added to dictionaries.
Last week the compilers of Collins’ ‘bible’ of words announced not just the latest list of additions but also selected their word of the year.
And what could be more apt than permacrisis, defined as ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’?
As 2022 draws to a close, war still rages between Ukraine and Russia, the resulting energy crisis continues to reverberate across Europe and the legacy of Covid hampers economic recovery. Meanwhile, political life pretty much everywhere is in turmoil.
Collins does not just produce a dictionary; it also monitors which words are being used the most in print, online and social media.
Over the course of this year, it noted a 22-fold increase in the use of permacrisis but the greatest increase was in the usage of ‘warm bank’, a term to describe public places where people go to keep warm if they cannot afford to heat their homes.
These comfort spaces could be libraries, community centres, art galleries and museums and even public transport.
Other newly recognised words included vibe shift, to describe a significant change in a prevailing atmosphere or trend, and Partygate, from the scandal that followed the discovery of boozy gatherings in Downing Street, which breached pandemic restrictions.
As new words come into everyday use, others fall out of fashion and are eventually removed from dictionaries.
Those recently deleted include frutescent, which refers to an object or person having the appearance of a shrub, while frigorific (causing cold, chilling) was replaced by ‘frigid’.
Sadly, aerodrome, with warm connotations of the leisurely early days of air travel, was dropped last year, as it was deemed to be inappropriate in the modern age.
Around the time that air travel was taking off from the beach at West Park, a familiar sight on Island roads was the char-à-banc. That, too, is now thought to be too archaic for the pages of a dictionary.
However, there is one unlisted word that should be revived, especially – from personal experience – when covering States sittings.
Brabble: to argue stubbornly about trifles.
What a ‘not’ to do
Ten years and £120m later and still no new hospital. It begs the question of what such an obscene amount of wasted taxpayers’ cash could have been better spent on. Answers on a postcard please.
Disrespectingthe people
As well as trashing the economy, making the UK the laughing stock of the world and causing misery for anyone with a mortgage – including those in Jersey – there were other actions, or lack of, which illustrate how ill-suited Liz Truss was for high office.
It has been reported that, in her 44 days in office, she failed to pick up a phone and call the first ministers of Scotland and Wales, Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford, respectively.
A serious oversight by the UK’s political head and an insult to the populace of two home nations.
Dangerous times
You would think that with waging war against Ukraine and its people, plunging Europe into an energy crisis and repeatedly threatening to deploy nuclear missiles in the direction of the West, Vladimir Putin would have enough to keep him occupied.
Well, obviously not.
He has found time to orchestrate the removal of the remains of a titan of Russian history, Prince Potemkin – statesman, military giant and lover of Catherine the Great.
He has particular appeal to Putin as, in his time, he conquered south Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
Late in October, a squad of Russian special forces undertook a mission in Kherson as Ukrainian forces advanced on the captured city.
They were under the highest orders to remove Potemkin’s corpse from the tomb in St Catherine’s Cathedral, where it had lain for more than 200 years, and take it to Moscow.
In a recent article in The Times, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose extensive writing about Russia’s past, including respected works on Stalin, the Romanovs (Russia’s ruling dynasty for more than 300 years), Catherine the Great and Potemkin, gave his assessment of what Putin was likely to do with the remains.
He envisaged a vulgar televised burial in some flashy new tomb to promote his own expansionist plans for restoring the borders of the old empire.
History is repeating itself in a fashion the post-Second-World-War generations believed would never happen again.
We live in dangerous times, as experienced during Germany’s expansionism in the early-20th century and the rise of the Nazis.
And, again, the future of the world depends on the nationalistic ambitions and empire-building aims of a single megalomaniac at the head of a corrupt and oppressive state system.
The doomsday clock must be ticking precariously close to midnight.
