Words Mean Things
We’ve developed a whole new language thanks to this global pandemic. First of all, the word pandemic. It’s not new, but how many of us used it in normal conversation before this year?
“Social distancing” is another. That’s got to be the winner in this year’s “new phrase” contest. I’m confident I never heard anyone say anything remotely close to that, until March of this year.
Dictionary.com has revised some of its definitions in light of our new usage. “Coronavirus” was always a word, used to define a broad category of virus, but we continue to use it as a synonym for COVID-19, coronavirus identified as number 19. “Novel coronavirus” is a new virus, and certainly not a work of fiction.
Here’s a new one. Apparently “coronavirus” is too long a word for some, so it’s been shortened to simply “rona”…as in “you have to be careful, the rona could kill you”.
Then of course, the phrase that some on the political left think should be mandatory, “shelter in place”. In the past, it seemed to just be associated with emergencies like a gunman on the loose, or severe weather.
I’m reminded of the floods of 1993, when the city of Des Moines water supply was affected and news anchors had to tell folks how to flush their toilets by dumping a bucket of water into the toilet bowl, to save stress on the system. Similarly, something we never thought we’d have to do…teach people how to properly wash their hands.
So keep your social distance to stop the spread of the rona, shelter in place, wash your hands…and all the rest of the 2020 buzzwords necessary to keep us alive.
