By Morf Morford
Tacoma Daily Index
Every year gives us new experiences and new ways of understanding or making sense of what transpires over the year. In that sense, 2021 is no exception, but in about every other way, 2021 has been, at minimum, exceptional.
2021 Vocabulary
Every year gives us new words or new meanings of familiar words. These new words reflect the fears, obsessions and cultural flash points of the times.
Who of us, before 2021, ever used the term “Critical Race Theory” (also known as CRT – NOT Cathode Ray Tube)? By summer of 2021, CRT was on every news talk show and dominated far too many conversations.
Whether those who used the term as if it were the greatest threat to America since, well, anything, had even the slightest understanding of what it meant or referred to is an entirely different question.
Besides the acronym CRT, we had PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), WFH (Work from Home) and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color).
One word that took on enhanced meaning was “adulting.” It’s generally used by young people when they talk about tasks that are boring, tedious, repetitive but essential to every-day life – like cooking meals, buying insurance, or paying taxes.
In Politics
Kamala Harris achieved several historic firsts when she was elected Vice President, becoming the first woman, the first Black person, and the first person with South Asian heritage to hold the office. And her husband, Doug Emhoff, in turn became our first “Second Gentleman”.
As one commentator put it, our political landscape is currently defined by two groups; the “fars” and the “not fars”; the extremes of left or right, and those of us “not far”.
In the Media
As more of us got our “news” from our hand held devices than from curated (and usually verified) news sources, the term “doom scrolling” took on added meaning as we scrolled from disaster to scandal to catastrophe on our small screens.
Zoom
The word “Zoom” has an entirely different set of connotations than it did a year or so ago.
“Zoom bombing” has nothing to do with an act of literal violence, but is an appropriation from “photo-bombing” of a few years ago.
Zoom also gave us a whole host of related terms with new or enhanced meanings, from mute to unmute to remote or f2f (face to face)
Pets
Household pets became an obsession in 2020 and 2021 – as did new breeds. Consider Bernedoodles, Labradoodles, Morkies, Maltipoos, Puggles, and Yorkiepoos. At least 23 new dog words came into use in 2021.
Pandemic talk
Besides the technical terms like PPE, and Delta, COVID gave us a whole new way of looking at ourselves and the world around us.
Those people we spent time with became known as our “pod” or our “bubble”.
“Long hauler” or “long COVID” refers to those who had COVID but who, to a large degree never fully recovered – or had lingering (sometimes completely new) effects that they attribute to the virus.
How about “contactless”? Who would have imagined that the absence of personal contact would be a selling point? Or how about “vaccine hesitancy”? Or “fifth wave”? Only in 2021.
And don’t forget “re-entry anxiety.” After a year or so of WFH, delayed and deferred activities and gatherings, many of us are not quite ready to leap back into the social whirl of activities. So of course we need a term for it.
Twisties
Simone Biles, besides dazzling us with her gymnastics moves, gave us a word to describe the sense of being disoriented while spinning during precarious gymnastic maneuvers.
Fortunately, few of us can imagine such a condition.
Neighborhood Car BQ
In the past five or so years we have become accustomed to another aspect of summer – fire season.
Almost every late summer has given us, besides higher temperatures and drier weather, fires, and with them, hovering forest fire smoke, which, in 2021 has stretched across most of the continental USA.
2021, as expected has given us another twist on fires.
Here in the Puget Sound area, we have seen a far higher frequency of building fires – most are either arson or accidental. But alongside building fires, for whatever reason, we have seen an increase in car fires.
Car fires, as you might guess, are dangerous and potentially explosive.
Cancel culture
What would 2021 be like without “cancel culture”?
In short, cancel culture refers to expressing disapproval and exerting negative social pressure.
Canceling someone or something is essentially erasing them from your life, removing your stamp of approval from their behavior, or drawing attention to the fact that you’re no longer supporting them.
In 2021, it seemed like everyone either wanted to “cancel” those they disagreed with or proclaimed themselves victims of “cancel culture”.
From Mr. Potato head to Colin Kaepernick to Bill Cosby, it seemed that anyone and everyone could, should or should be protected from being “cancelled”.
Hard pass
“Hard pass” is one way to say “No thanks” to an invitation.
Or, as many people I know might use it, it is the perfect way to capture the essence of the response of many of us to the year itself.
I get the feeling that 2020 and 2021 will be the years few of us will have fond memories of just a year or so from now.
On a personal note, in July of 2021, I had my first kidney stone. Actually I had three at once. The pain was so extreme that no pain pill had any effect. Gravity, natural processes, surgery and the passage of time was the only solution.
Passing the stone gave me a whole new definition of “hard pass”. But that too, seemed like a good summation of 2021.
