Lovers of language are drawing their list of words that have evolved their meaning in 2018 as politicians, business leaders and journalists used them to convey strong messages to their audiences. Powerful words and catchphrases attract the interest of most people even if their use may not last for long.
Etymologists agree that ‘toxic’ is the most powerful word that characterised 2018. The Oxford English Dictionary has defined it as the word for 2018 as it saw a 45 per cent rise in the number of times the term has been searched on oxforddictionaries.com.
The overuse of toxic started with the #MeToo movement when misogyny and aggression were labelled as signs of toxic masculinity. Toxic soon became popular in political discourse propelled by social media outrage. A good example of toxic politics could be Trump’s rabid attacks on journalists, migrants and the Democrats.
For most Britons, the word that they must have heard repeated most often is ‘backstop’. The best definition I found of this word was in the Financial Times. The FT defines backstop as an insurance policy that guarantees there will be an invisible border across the island of Ireland, “but don’t worry because it will never need to be used, I promise” according to Theresa May. I do not blame the millions of Britons who still do not understand what backstop is and much less when it is qualified by “temporary”, “indefinite” or “permanent” adjectives.
‘Vassalage’ is another word that has been very popular in 2018 in the Brexit debate. The colourful Boris Johnson lamented that the UK risked becoming an EU colony if it were to accept the agreement reached by Theresa May with the EU. “This is the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200,” raged Johnson.
The word ‘vassalage’ was driven in the Brexit lexicon by a well-dressed Labour Party spokesman, Barry Gardiner. He solemnly declared in an article: “The UK would technically not be a member of the EU, but we would in effect become a vassal state: obliged to pay into the union’s budget while having even less sovereignty than we do now.”
Katie Martin, writing in the Financial Times, had chosen ‘crypto’ as the word she believes has characterised most 2018. Staunch supporters of cryptocurrencies thought that 2018 “was to be the year that their beloved digital tokens started to usurp the fuddy-duddy old world of flat money. Companies were cramming the word ‘blockchain’ – the technology behind the crypto craze – into their names and watching their shares rocket 500 per cent,” writes Martin.
She goes further and quotes the Bank of International Settlements general manager, Augustin Carsten’s who called the crypto craze “a combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster”.
The word ‘vassalage’ was driven in the Brexit lexicon by a well-dressed Labour Party spokesman, Barry Gardiner
President Trump must be the most prolific creator of catchphrases that have appeared in the global media thanks to his continuous comments on Twitter. ‘Presidential harassment’ must be one of his more frequently-used by Trump. He used it to blame Democrats for the sharp downturns in Wall Street at different times in 2018.
“The prospect of presidential harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches” he tweeted conveniently forgetting that whenever the Stock Market soared in 2017, he claimed that this was all due to his inspirational leadership.
US Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell first used the term ‘presidential harassment’ after the Democrats won the House of Representatives majority. He argued that the Democrats expected investigations into Trump’s tax returns, business dealings and potential connections with Russia and his campaign as “presidential harassment”.
‘Nationalism’ is another word that means different things to different political leaders. French President Macron rebuked Trump in 2018. He insisted: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.”
In one of his Make America Great Again rallies leading to the mid-term elections, Trump declared that he was “a nationalist”. Trump argued: ”You know they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It is called a nationalist. I am a nationalist. OK? I am a nationalist.” If only politicians could at least agree on what a particular word means.
In 2019 we will see more catchphrases used by journalists, politicians and business leaders to capture the attention of ordinary people who are getting immune to the effects of verbal fireworks. There are enough geopolitical problems to stimulate the coinage of new phrases to sugar-coat inept political leadership.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com