ADS’s Word of the Year for 2020

In an appropriate and utterly unsurprising choice, the American Dialect Society has picked Covid as its Word of the Year for 2020. The ADS press release detailing the choice, and the choices for its other categories of words, is here. You can read that for a full accounting of the history and purpose of the society’s choice there.

I participated in the selection this year, which is something I normally don’t get to do. In the past, the WOTY selection process is held at the ADS’s annual meeting in early January. I have on occasion participated, but usually scheduling and travel budget precludes my attending. But this year, the ADS canceled its annual meeting, and the WOTY nominations and voting were held virtually, over Zoom.

Overall, the virtual format was superior to an in-person meeting. First, it allowed a more diverse group of attendees. There were over three hundred participating in the discussion and voting, and an uncounted number of others watching the livestream on YouTube. It also allowed for more discussion. While the number who literally spoke was the same as past, in-person sessions I’ve attended, the chat feature on Zoom was alive with comments and questions from many more. And the voting process was streamlined, with no more raising and time-consuming counting of hands. This year, each round of voting took less than a minute. Of course, the in-person contact was absent over Zoom, and that is a minus.

The process is, and has been, in two parts. First, a smaller group meets to nominate words and to decide what categories the nominees belong in. About thirty people participated this year. I found this first, two-hour session the more interesting of the two as we got a chance to discuss the nominees in much more detail and in a more focused manner than is possible with 300+ attendees. The second half held two days later, is the larger meeting where the vote is held. Nominations can be made from the floor, and some changes were made to the nominees. Overall, it’s rather democratic, although there is a bit of autocracy in the name of keeping the meeting moving.

The categories and the nominees and winners are:

WORD OF THE YEAR (2020)

• *Covid: shorthand for Covid-19, the name given to the disease caused by infection from novel coronavirus; also used more broadly to refer to the pandemic and its impacts 2020: used to sum up chaotic and despondent feelings inspired by the year’s events

• antiracism: the practice of actively working to prevent or combat racism

• Before Times: the time before the beginning of the pandemic (followed by Now Times After Times)

• BIPOC: acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color or Black and Indigenous People of Color

• doomscrolling: obsessively scanning social media and websites for bad news

• pandemic: epidemic over a wide area affecting a large proportion of the population

• social distancing: keeping away from others as much as possible to prevent the spread of

• coronavirus: should need no definition

• unprecedented: never having happened, existed, or experienced before

As I said, the choice of Covid for word of the year was rather obvious, but 2020 gave it a run for its money. I thought pandemic would get more play, but its generic nature worked against it; most thought that it could apply to many other years and circumstances, while Covid was both specific to this year and linguistically more productive. 2020 was one I had not considered, but as several people who advocated for it commented, the angst of this year was not caused by Covid alone; there was a high-stakes US presidential election, wildfires and climate change, racism and police murdering Black people as well.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

• *antiracism: the practice of actively working to prevent or combat racism

• BIPOC

• contactless: requiring no physical contact, to avoid transmitting disease

• curbside: adjacent to a curb, as for pickup of goods without entering a store or restaurant

• gigafire: a wildfire that burns at least a million acres of land

• Zoomer: term for Generation Z, originally modeled on boomer, now highlighting their use of Zoom for remote learning and other activities

Antiracism rightly took the most-likely-to-succeed prize in a landslide. BIPOC did not do as well, either because antiracism siphoned votes away from it, or because there was a feeling it wasn’t all that familiar to many. Contactless came in second. At first, I thought this (and curbside) was a poor choice for this category as it would likely disappear once the lockdowns were over, but the discussion convinced me that many people, especially women, don’t like the idea of nameless delivery people knocking on their door, and companies are recognizing that this is desired feature for many customers. My personal favorite was gigafire, which despite the technical misuse of the prefix, is a term that, unfortunately, will be with us for years to come, and I felt the issue of climate change was not well represented among the nominees. Zoomer was also a socially interesting choice. The word predates the pandemic and the use of Zoom by the masses, having been Generation Z’s counterpart to boomer. But the fact that much of that generation’s academic and social life is taking place virtually is shaping that generation’s qualities in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

MOST USEFUL

• *Before Times: the time before the beginning of the pandemic (followed by Now Times or After Times)

• Blursday: humorous indication of difficulty in determining what day of the week it is

• bubble/pod: terms for the group with which one remains in quarantine

• PPE: abbreviation for personal protective equipment

• superspreader: a patient or event responsible for spreading infection to many people

Before Times, a reference to life before Covid, took the most useful category. I really like it, with its blending of current events with a sci-fi quality. Blursday was a popular choice, with its humorous take on the problem of not being able to distinguish one day of the week from another. Going in, I thought bubble would do better than it did, but as one commenter pointed out that the term represents a degree of privilege. Those in low-paid, “essential,” jobs often cannot literally afford to live in a protective bubble.

POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR

• *abolish/defund: verbs used (at times hyperbolically) to call for drastic restructuring or reforming of law enforcement in the aftermath of the George Floyd police killing

• dissent collar: jabot collar worn by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when issuing dissenting opinions, and worn by others in her honor after her death

• freedumb: reckless or thoughtless invocation of “freedom,” for instance in refusing to wear a mask

• petromasculinity: form of masculinity on display during pro-Trump highway rallies

• red mirage/blue shift: appearance from early returns in the 2020 presidential election that voting was skewing toward Republicans before more Democratic-leaning votes were counted

Abolish and defund are rather linguistically and politically interesting because both proponents and opponents sometimes use them literally, while the majority of people understand them to be hyperbolic, using some of the vast resources devoted to policing for other, less-well-funded, emergency response services, like mental health services. Dissent collar is a nice nod to RBG, but I don’t think term is especially emblematic of political events of the year. Freedumb is a funny-once joke. I really like petromasculinity, with its combination of testosterone, Trump, and support for Big Oil, but I hadn’t heard of it before the nomination session, and I don’t think it has had much currency. There was a discussion of red mirage/blue shift in both the nominating and voting sessions over whether these terms were ephemeral or whether they would stand the test of time. Blue shift, however, dates to at least the 2018 election, in relation to the composition of the House of Representatives, so I think the terms will be relevant in future elections, but they don’t have the vitality or importance of abolish/defund.

DIGITAL WORD OF THE YEAR

• *doomscrolling

• #BlackInTheIvory: hashtag used to amplify the voices of Black scholars and their experiences of systemic racism within academia

• fancam: video clip made by a fan of a musical act, especially a K-Pop band, which can be used to derail an online conversation or as a form of subversive political protest; also a verb

• sus: clipping of suspicious often used in the game Among Us to label a player suspected of being an impostor

• TikToked: to be made the target of a campaign mobilizing TikTok users, as for political purposes

I find all these terms fascinating in their own way, but doomscrolling took it in a landslide. While the others all have things to recommend them, they are all products of particular digital niches, while doomscrolling has been experienced by a wide cross-section of the country.

ZOOM-RELATED WORD OF THE YEAR

• *you’re muted: refrain on Zoom to remind someone to unmute when speaking

• oysgezoomt: fatigued or bored by Zoom (formed in Yiddish)

• Zoombombing: disruptive intrusion on a Zoom session by online trolls

• Zoom fatigue: exhaustion experienced by being over-exposed to Zoom

• zumping: [Zoom + dumping] breaking up with someone via Zoom

Much as I love oysgezoomt, I take perverse delight in the winner in this category being the only one without the word zoom in it. Zoom Video Communications, Inc. has gotten enough free publicity this year.

PANDEMIC-RELATED WORD OF THE YEAR

• *social distancing: keeping away from others as much as possible to prevent the spread of coronavirus

• contact tracing: the process of identifying who may have come into contact with a person carrying an infectious disease like coronavirus

• coronials: the coronavirus generation, for the predicted baby boom in the wake of the pandemic

• Covid

• flattening the curve: the effort to slow the spread of coronavirus by taking community isolation measures

• moronavirus: disparaging term for foolish behavior or ideas related to the coronavirus pandemic

These are rather straightforward, and I don’t have much to say about them. There was a discussion about whether or not the appropriate term was physical distancing, as that is literally what is intended and shouldn’t imply a severing of social ties, which are necessary to one’s mental health. But this was an audience of linguists, and pretty much everyone recognized that no matter which was more “technically correct,” the term that everyone uses is social distancing.

SLANG/INFORMAL WORD OF THE YEAR

• *the rona: playful term for “coronavirus” (also: Rona, Miss Rona, Aunt Rona)

• covidiot: a person who foolishly ignores COVID-19 protocols 39

• girls, gays, and theys: inclusive form of address encompassing female-identifying, LGBTQ, and nonbinary identities

• poggers: term used to denote excitement, derived from a Twitch emote showing someone with a surprised expression

• WAP: acronym for “wet-ass pussy,” from the song of that title by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion

I’m a middle-aged, cis-het, white man; I was not familiar with the last three on this list. (To my credit, I knew who Cardi B is and had a vague sense that WAP had been in the news, but not much more than that.) The rona took the category in a run-off with WAP. I found the nominating session discussion of this quite illuminating. I can’t do justice to a further definition of girls, gays, and theys or of poggers, so if like me you hadn’t heard these before, you’ll have to Google. There were objections to covidiot (and moronavirus above) in that the terms are making use of slurs for people with disabilities, and we shouldn’t promote that by giving them airtime. And WAP really is an important word because it is a counter to the overt male sexuality one typically finds in rap music, and the fact that makes people uncomfortable reveals the sexual double standard in the genre and promotes female empowerment.

EUPHEMISM OF THE YEAR

• *essential (workers, labor, businesses): used for people, often underpaid, who are actually treated as expendable because they are required to work and thus risk infection from coronavirus

• everything is cake: expression of extreme distrust, based on memes in which objects turn out to be hyper-realistic cakes

• freedom seeds: nickname for ammunition used by the National Rifle Association

• humaning: marketing term for a consumer-oriented approach

• officer-involved shooting: shooting by a police officer

• Toobin, v.: to expose oneself on Zoom in the manner of Jeffrey Toobin

I thought that officer-involved shooting was the more important and egregious euphemism, but the majority went with essential. In the nominating session, there was a concern that people would misinterpret the inclusion of essential worker, hence the shortening to just essential. The euphemistic aspect is that in most cases the work is essential, but the worker is treated as disposable. And there are a few businesses, like World Wrestling Entertainment in Florida, as being classed as essential with no legitimate claim to that title.

EMOJI OF THE YEAR

• * (face with medical mask): indicating mask-wearing during the pandemic

• (two fingers touching): used to indicate shyness, hesitation, or pleading

• (face with pleading eyes): used for timid begging or beseeching

• (eye mouth eye): “It is what it is,” also used to express amazement, shock, disgust, or confusion

• (writing hand): used for bullet-pointed lists of how to fix things

• (emoji hugging a heart): used on Facebook for the “care” reaction

To my mind, this was the most disappointing of the categories this year. I was pulling for the Facebook care reaction, but mainly out of a perverse knowledge that it wasn’t technically an emoji. And there was general agreement that they eye-mouth-eye combo was deeply disturbing (some uncanny valley action going on there). But in the end, the group went with the most boring, the face with the medical mask.

In the end, selections of word of the year don’t really matter. But I find the process fun and fascinating. It’s a chance to interact with colleagues I rarely get to see, I learn new things, and it’s an opportunity to review what events of the past year were really important and which were passing ephemeralities. The winners don’t always reflect what was important, but the process is illuminating, nonetheless.

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Should a White Person Ever Use the N-word?

10 November 2020

Should a White Person Ever Use the N-word?

No.

As a White person, it’s not my place to explain why the term when coming out of the mouths of White people is offensive, while when coming out of the mouths of Black people it may not be. So, here is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who gives a clear and linguistically correct explanation.

Watch (5-minute video):

My editorial policy on this site is to not use the n-word. In my everyday speech and writing, I don’t use that word at all, and I try not to use other offensive terms lightly or without consideration, but on this site I don’t shy away from using such words when those words are the topic of discussion—I find it strange and even overly precious to avoid saying a word when one is talking about a word. But the n-word, when coming from the mouth or keyboard of a White person like me, is so inflammatory and offensive and the ongoing history of White supremacy is such that I do not want to use it even in that context.

In recent posts I have expurgated the word or referred to it as the n-word. I have expurgated it even in quotations where the word is intact in the original text, using square brackets to mark the fact that it is me who is doing the eliding (i.e., n[——]). In these cases, I don’t think anyone will misinterpret what the original text actually says, so nothing is lost in the elision. If you find an old post that uses the word in a quotation it is because I have missed it. If you let me know about it, I will correct it.

The sole exception to this policy is the entry for the n-word itself, where I do use the word once to establish beyond doubt what word I am writing about. Elsewhere I have expurgated or used n-word wherever the double-g spelling appears. I have left other, earlier variant spellings intact so one can see how the form of the word developed over time.

If anyone is offended by this limited use of the word on this site, please accept my apologies. And if you have constructive criticism on this policy or how I have described the word, I sincerely want to hear it.

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What Do We Mean by Anglo-Saxon? Pre-Conquest to the Present

19 October 2020

My article on how the term Anglo-Saxon has been used over the centuries has finally been officially published.

A pdf of the paper can be downloaded from JSTOR. (JSTOR access required to download at no cost.)

The raw data, in the form an Excel spreadsheet, can downloaded from here.

Wilton, David. “What Do We Mean By Anglo-Saxon? Pre-Conquest to the Present.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology (JEGP), 119.4, October 2020, 425–54.

The article uses linguistic corpora, ranging from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus to the Corpus of Contemporary American English, to trace the usage and senses of the term Anglo-Saxon from the early medieval period through to the present day. It shows that in the early medieval period, while the term was used on the Continent insular use prior to Norman Conquest was rare, referred only to the unified kingdom of Mercia and Wessex, and was limited to the context of royal intitulature. Following the Conquest, it disappeared from English usage before being re-borrowed from continental Latin in the late sixteenth century. And starting at the turn of the nineteenth century it began to be applied to contemporary contexts, first as politico-cultural marker for things English or British, and shortly afterward as an ethno-racial marker. Present-day use of Anglo-Saxon, even in academic circles, is usually not as a reference to the pre-Conquest era, but rather as a contemporary identity label, usually as a marker of whiteness, or as a politico-cultural marker for the global dominance of U.S./British cultural, political, and economic institutions and policies. While the use of the term as an identity label is strongest in North America, such use makes up a substantial percentage of British usage as well.

The results of this study have implications for how the field of medieval studies, and studies of pre-Conquest England in particular, use Anglo-Saxon. Not only is the term analytically problematic because it conflates ethnically and politically distinct peoples in the pre-Conquest era, but its present-day use as a ethno-racial identity marker inevitably associates the field with race and whiteness at a time when the field is striving to break from its roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century, ethno-nationalist thinking.

super-precedent

18 October 2020

Well, in my writings, so as a professor, I talked about the doctrine of stare decisis, and super precedent is not a doctrinal term that comes from the Supreme Court and I think maybe in political conversation or in newspapers, people use it different ways. But in my writing, I was using a framework that’s been articulated by other scholars. And in that context, super-precedent means precedent that is so well established that it would be unthinkable that it would ever be overruled. And there are about six cases on this list that other scholars have identified.

—Amy Coney Barrett, 13 October 2020

Super-precedent is term that has been in the news this week, and it’s an excellent example of how a term’s meaning can change over time and how a term can mean different things to different people.

In deciding cases, judges are supposed to follow the rule of stare decisis, which is Latin meaning to stand by things that have been decided. In other words, judges are supposed to be guided by the decisions that courts have previously made. Overturning a precedent is not something to be done lightly.

The term super-precedent was first used in a law review article written by William Landes and Richard Posner in 1976, but they defined it quite differently than Judge Coney Barrett does in the above quote. Landes and Posner were trying to devise a framework to determine the relative importance of various cases, or in other words, how to measure how precedential a particular decision was. They considered using a count of the number of times a case is cited but rejected that. Landes and Posner write:

In some instances, counting citations may result in underestimating the true number of precedents by excluding the precedent that is so effective in defining the requirements of the law that it prevents legal disputes from arising in the first place or, if they do arise, induces them to be settled without litigation. In the limit, such a “superprecedent” might never be cited in an appellate opinion yet have greater precedential significance that the most frequently cited cases. But such cases are probably rare.

Landes and Posner use super in its Latin sense meaning beyond. To them, a super-precedent is not a precedent of higher rank; it is a decision that is so fundamental that it cannot even be understood within the framework of precedent.

Linguistically though, Landes and Posner’s use is an outlier. Not only do they define it differently than later writers would, but the concept doesn’t appear again for nearly twenty-five years, when on 28 July 2000 Judge John Luttig raises it in a concurring opinion in Richmond Medical Center v. Gilmore. Luttig does not use super-precedent, but uses super-stare decisis instead, specifying that the abortion cases of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are super-precedents and settled legal questions that should not be revisited by the courts:

I understand the Supreme Court to have intended its decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey to be a decision of super-stare decisis with respect to a woman's fundamental right to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy (“Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade, that definition of liberty is still questioned....After considering the fundamental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed.”). And I believe this understanding to have been not merely confirmed, but reinforced, by the Court's recent decision in Stenberg v. Carhart (“This Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. We shall not revisit those legal principles.”).

Luttig is not advancing the idea of a class of cases that cannot be revisited, but rather says that if courts have, over time, steadfastly refused to revisit a case, then it becomes a settled question. It should be noted that both Posner and Luttig were conservative, federal appeals court judges, now both retired.

But Luttig’s opinion brought the concept of super-precedent into conservative legal circles. It was an attractive concept, declaring a small number of cases off limits would allow judges to overturn those that were mere precedents, effectively gutting the concept of stare decisis while pretending to abide by it.

Super-precedent was used a number of times during the 13 September 2005 Senate confirmation hearing for Chief Justice John Roberts. In the following exchange between Roberts and Senator John Cornyn, the incoming chief justice seems to reject the notion of super-precedent, but states that Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and by implication Roe v. Wade, are not irrevocable decisions:

CORNYN.      Well, I know that we have heard today about a number of terms from stare decisis to pro hac vice, to pro forma, to—the only one we have not heard is res ipsa loquitur and a number of other Latin phrases that we learned in law school. Let me ask you about stare decisis. I have heard fascinating discussion back and forth about precedent and how you would deal with a case, let’s say for example, Roe v. Wade, and some have suggested, law professors and maybe others, that somehow that is a super precedent, or in the words of our inimitable Chairman, a super-duper precedent. I think we are introducing new words to the legal lexicon as this hearing goes on. But in all seriousness, if—well, let me ask you this. Is stare decisis an insurmountable obstacle to revisiting a decision based on an interpretation of the Constitution?

ROBERTS.     What the Supreme Court has said, in the Casey decision, for example, is that it is not an inexorable command. In other words, it’s not an absolute rule, and that’s why they have these various cases that explain the circumstances under which you should revisit a prior precedent that you think may be flawed and when you shouldn’t.

As Cornyn indicates, there was little agreement among the committee on what a super-precedent, or a super-duper precedent, was. But a concise definition would soon come. In a 2007 article in the George Mason Law Review, Michael Sinclair defines it as follows:

To say a case is a super-precedent means it is judicially unshakeable, a precedential monument which may not be gainsaid.

But while Luttig said that a court’s refusal to revisit a case is grounds for considering it a settled question, Sinclair disagrees, instead using a criterion of political opposition to a decision to determine whether or not it is a super-precedent:

Of course this discussion arises in the context of the right to terminate a pregnancy and the status of Roe v. Wade and its successor in principle, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Some would like the sequence to be considered unchallengeable. But there is a significant portion of the population ardently against permitting a woman to control her own reproductive function, significant enough to influence elections. Judicial sensitivity to societal demands thus puts the adaptivity of Roe v. Wade in question as it is repeatedly challenged in state legislation. Thus it should not be called a super-precedent.

And Coney Barrett has followed Sinclair’s lead. She agrees with Sinclair’s definition in the quotation at the head of this article, and she also agrees that the two landmark abortion cases are not examples of a super-precedent. In this exchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar, she uses the same political criterion as Sinclair, not a legal one, to determine what is a super-precedent:

Klobuchar:      Okay. Well, you also separately acknowledged that in a Planned Parenthood V Casey, the Supreme Court’s controlling opinion talked about the reliance interests on Roe V Wade, which it treated in that case, as super-precedent. Is Roe a super precedent?

Coney Barrett: How would you define super-precedent?

Klobuchar: Actually, I thought someday I’d be sitting in that chair. I’m not. I’m up here. So I’m asking you.

Coney Barrett: Well, people use super-precedent differently.

Klobuchar: Okay.

Coney Barrett: The way that it’s used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article that you’re reading from was to define cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category. And scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled, but descriptively, it does mean that it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling.

Super-precedent has evolved. From 1976 into the 2000s the term was defined by a judicial criterion of whether or not courts chose to revisit and question past decisions. If the courts did not, then over time it would become a settled question, a super-precedent. But in the early 2000s the criterion shifted to a political one, whether or not a decision was popular, and decisions that faced political opposition were fair game for courts to overturn, while courts could not touch popular decisions, regardless of whether or not they were based on sound judicial grounds. In 2005, the very idea of super-precedent was controversial, with John Roberts avoiding embracing the topic in his confirmation hearings, but by 2020, the concept was fully embraced by Amy Coney Barrett.

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Sources:

“Amy Coney Barrett Senate Confirmation Hearing Day 2 Transcript.” Rev.com, 13 October 2020.

Landes, William M. and Richard A. Posner. “Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis.” The Journal of Law and Economics, 19.2, August 1976, 251. JSTOR Complete.

Richmond Medical Center for Women. v. James Gilmore, 219 F.3d 376, 376-77, U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit. 28 July 2000). Thomson Reuters Westlaw.

Sinclair, Michael. “Precedent, Super-Precedent.” George Mason Law Review, 14.2, Winter 2007, 365, 403.

Torrez, Andrew and Thomas Smith. “OA430: Amy Coney Barrett Is Terrible” (podcast). Opening Arguments, episode 430, 15 October 2020.

United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United States. J–109–37, 109th Congress, first session, 12–15 September 2005, 270.

Boneless Chicken Wings

Far Side cartoon, by Gary Larson, depicting limp chickens scattered about a bucolic environment with a sign that reads “Boneless Chicken Ranch”

3 September 2020

On 31 August 2020, Ander Christensen made an impassioned plea before the Lincoln, Nebraska city council to ban the use of the term boneless chicken wings in local restaurant menus, arguing that the term was misleading. But by the end of the video it becomes obvious that Christensen is less than serious about his cause. So, enjoy it for the rhetoric, not the logic.

Of course, words and phrases mean what we use them to mean, and in the case of boneless chicken wings, there is no misunderstanding among customers as to what they are ordering. So, if he were not joking, despite his ardor for the cause, Christensen would have been wrong.

Watch (2-minute video):

Ander Christensen tells the Lincoln, Nebraska city council that boneless chicken wings must be renamed.

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Image credit: The Far Side, by Gary Larson, c. 1980.