Word of the week: shitshow
Yep, in the House.
Performative again
Arts & Letters Daily recently linked to a short commentary on the word performative. The commentary is crotchety and overwrought, with talk of corruption and senseless violence and infestations of body lice. I’m not linking. It so happens that I wrote what seems to me a far clearer, more helpful, and less wrought commentary on performative back in March. That commentary I’ll link to.
Performative
In speech-act terms, a performative is a statement that does something. In current everyday use, performative describes a statement that pretends to do something, that is merely a performance, that substitutes for doing anything of substance.
Nail-biter and others
Peter Sokolowski of Merriam-Webster looks at words of the 2020 election.
Just say no to interregnum
There is no throne. There is never not a president. And we don’t (yet) have a declaration of martial law.
Stalling vs. declining to act
Curious phrasing in the Illinois news segment dropped into NPR’s Morning Edition this morning: Senate Democrats are seeking to stall any nomination to the Supreme Court. But: In 2016, Senate Republicans declined to act on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. The verbs caught my ear.
“Us”
Donald Trump*, in advance of signing his “deal” with China, acknowledging audience members Sheldon and Miriam Adelson: “They’re tremendous supporters of us and the Republican Party.” Us = me, not the country. It’s the presidential plural again.
“DEMENTED WORDS”
I look forward to the day when we are no longer a country that will stand for Donald Trump’s demented words of violence and death. Also his demented words of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and vilification of all who oppose him.
Meddling
A column in The Washington Post says, “Stop calling it ‘meddling.’” I’m there. Or was there and am there. I wrote about this word in February 2018.
Words from politics
This week from Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day , words from politics: malfeasance, nepotism, emolument, collusion, impeach. Yep. They all fit.
More bad words
The Washington Post reports that the Centers for Disease Control is not alone in cuts to vocabulary.
The seven words you can’t write at the CDC
Forbidden words: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
On hope
Imagine a chair or dean, after a meeting has ended, asking for a private word with a faculty member who suspects plagiarism in the work of some favored student: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Biff go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
A real nut job
I found this defenseless creature online and combed its tail forward.
Word of the day: nut job
Perhaps nut job will be the 2017 word of the year.
If ever there was a need for misinflammation . . .
Anthony J. Blinken’s opinion piece in today’s New York Times cries out for use of the timely word misinflammation, coined in these pages last year.
“An enemy of the people”
Long story short: the French Revolution, an Ibsen play, Lenin, Stalin, and sometimes Mao.
Dictionaries rising
From the Fashion and Style pages of The New York Times, a report on increased interest in dictionaries.
“Alternate” and “alternative” “facts”
Mary Norris on “alternate” and “alternative.”
E. B. White on America Firsters
Fascism, nationalism, and America Firsters.
Word of the day: tyrant
Our president-elect appears to possess the traits of both Platonic and theatrical tyrants.
Words for these times
From the American Heritage Dictionary, words for these times: “Minions, sycophants, toadies, and other creatures.”
Word of the day: emolument
See also: “kleptocracy.”
Merriam-Webster v. fascism
Merriam-Webster is encouraging readers to look up something other than “fascism.”
A Word of the Year
“After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth.”
Something phishy
About e-mail, expletive infixation, and my deep and unerasable misgivings about voting for Hillary Clinton.
Off the rails
“Former president Clinton has been on the road since January, going around the country railing for his wife.”
Stepping in it
Harry Frankfurt, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney.
Word of the day: sketchy
“Creepy, iffy,” &c.
Live-blogging the debate
“Sketchy.”