The new words of 2020
Well, of course, our new words were mostly to do with COVID-19 but there were a few other things that preoccupied us during the year.
There was the environment with our concerns sharpened by bushfire and flood at the beginning of the year. The shock and grief experienced by the people who lost their homes left them paralysed when it came to making decisions. This was described as having bushfire brain. The gallant Mozzies appeared – locals who banded together to assist the official firefighting crews.
We worried about climate justice and climate migrants. Technology offered possible solutions in the shape of green kerosene and the community battery. And social practices began to change as instanced by the composting burial.
More and more we love our pets, it seems. We can now apply for pawternity leave to settle a new puppy into the household. And we can arrange puptials for our dogs, giving them all the glamour of dress-ups at an official occasion. Actually this is a fundraiser but the enthusiasm for pets makes it an attraction.
And those who can’t manage a pet can possibly manage an indoor plant to rival the fur child and qualify as a plant parent.
Politics was either about the environment, the pandemic or China. This last obsession produced the Wolf Warrior diplomacy, the perceived aggressive style in which China conducted its international relations. In Australia we added panda bashing to our list of bashings.
American politics gave us the nose-pinching option, one of two that are equally undesirable so that it can only be chosen by pinching the nose to avoid the bad smell.
There is always something new in food. This year it was dalgona coffee (an import from South Korea) and black cheese (cheddar cheese blended with edible activated charcoal). We now have functional water that is ever so much better than tap water because it does something extra to improve our health. The latest in Indigenous fruits to be commercially exploited is the green plum.
And while we are on health, this year the benefits of hypnobirthing were extolled by none other than the Duchess of Cambridge. An old treatment that is being resurrected is the milk bath. Cleopatra would approve.
We had scams. Smishing is phishing by text message. Virtual kidnapping was one that mostly affected the Chinese community. Chinese students were made to pretend that they were kidnapped and demand ransom money from their parents. Brushing is faking sales online to boost your Amazon rating.
Colloquialisms were the thumbstopper, plamping, and frontstabbing.
The stereotype of the Karen was imported from America but gained ground here as the Bunnings Karen, the woman who demanded to see the manager. In the stress of the pandemic the Bunnings Karen became the woman who approached the checkout while not wearing a mask as an act of defiance, mask wearing being a threat to her personal freedoms.
And now to the pandemic. There were the official words like COVID-19, a name chosen by the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. There were the medical terms that we suddenly came to know: community transmission, cough cloud, PPE, P2 mask, super spreader, surge capacity and virtual hospital. And there were the terms created by governments dealing with the crisis: COVID safe, digital contact tracing, e-vaccination certificate, pandemic leave, traffic light border pass, travel bubble. There were the words that surfaced in the politics surrounding the event: anti-masker, economic hibernation, snapback, flattening the curve, mask diplomacy, single source of truth, sovcit.
Then there were the social effects: apocaholism, choice fatigue, coronaphobia, doomscrolling, lockdown fatigue, coronavirus clapping, elbow bump, social distancing, hybrid office, coronababy, elopement wedding, corona truther, quarantine style, revenge travel. But there was also humour, albeit sometimes black: bin outing, boomer remover, coronacoma, Coronageddon, fakeaway, hamsterkauf, quarantini. There were colloquialisms that made us feel that we were cool about it all: the Rona, quazza, iso, hanny san. And events like doughnut day and V-day.
And so what would I choose as the word of the year? I think bubble emerged as a surprisingly useful word. We began with a COVID bubble, but quickly added border bubble, team bubble, trans-Tasman bubble, travel bubble, intimate bubble, and bubble buddy. It was as if there was a bubble machine there churning out bubbles. Who would have thought that we would all end up living in a bubble?