Can I have a word please?

January always seems to be a very busy month for lexicographers. It is the month in which many of them make learned pronouncements on the Word of the Year (which seems to be frequently abbreviated to WOTY – an acronym surely destined for WOTY status itself; you heard it here first).

 

The American Dialect Society has voted “because” as the 2013 WOTY.  While I confess to a strong desire to be a member of something as grandly named as the American Dialect Society, and I have spent hours today pondering what they discuss at their meetings other than the annual WOTY, I am quite sure it must be a society that is closed to parents of adolescents. Can you imagine any parent of an adolescent choosing “because” as a word to be celebrated? Personally, I think it is a word to be banned.

“Why did you not hand in that assignment?” Because.
“Why are you home so late?” Because.
“Why did you hit your brother?” Because.
“Why is your vocabulary limited to single word answers?” Because.

Taking a somewhat different approach, the Oxford Dictionary’s editorial board has declared “selfie” to be the word of 2013. I am still wondering how such an invariably unflattering act (what’s to love about a triple chin, an elongated shiny forehead and an enormous forearm?) came to be so popular in the first place, so I am a long way from understanding the popularity of the word itself.

Australia’s lexicographic authority, the Macquarie Dictionary, announces its WOTY in February each year, after a month of furious voting in January, so I am unable to share its decision with you this early in 2014. However, I can tell you that last year the Macquarie editorial board came up with “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” or PVS as its nominated word. The use of three distinct words as a single WOTY says a lot for Australians’ counting ability, or more likely their disregard for international WOTY rules. Be that as it may, I have been intrigued to learn that PVS is a clinically recognised phenomenon whereby you think your phone is vibrating but it's not. This concept is so incomprehensible to me, a woman regularly criticised and abused by her nearest and dearest for consistently failing to respond to an actual vibration and/or ring tone, that I cannot begin to comprehend the notion of a phantom vibration.

In addition to WOTY’s, I have also noticed a trend among etymologically-inclined journalists to fill the many slow news days in January with insightful opinions on the worst words and phrases from the previous year; a sort of Anti-WOTY-Votie.

Thankfully, YOLO (as in “you only live once”) seems to have topped many A-WOTY-V lists for 2013, a feat that I hope will ensure its demise. It brings out the grumpy old woman in me to hear people use it as a justification for any indefensible action or inaction:

“ ... so we stole his school bag and hid it in the library. It was SOOO funny. YOLO”.

"I didn't do that thing you asked me to do because I was a bit busy, sorry. YOLO".

You're low.

“Twerking” is also high up in the unpopularity stakes, as measured by the A-WOTY-V brigade, which I’m happy about. I firmly believe that people who use that word (the sound of which is almost as bad as the concept) should be forced to watch back-to-back Miley C video clips whilst chanting “I will not say ‘twerk’ again” and being force-fed Brussels sprouts mixed with pickled herring. I would however like to popularise the word “twerk” as a term of abuse. For example, “You are a stupid twerk”. I believe it could very well become a WOTY 2014 contender, should it catch on.

I would like to submit a personal A-WOTY-V; the outdated but infuriatingly persistent “LOL”. I understand it is widely used in social networking circles to express (inaudible) audible amusement, but it tends to have the opposite effect on me, making me want to Scream Out Loud (there’s a thought; could I be single-handedly responsible for the establishment of SOL in our language, I wonder?).

I am not sure if it counts as an A-WOTY-V, but I am also keen to stop the emerging trend of using full stops as a form of emphasis.

As in “Stop. It. Now. "
"It’s. So. Grammatically. Irritating."

Full stop. No more.

But back to words. January words.

About ten years ago, my sister-in-law told me about a tradition that she and some friends had of nominating a “word for the year” (as opposed to a Word OF the Year) every New Year’s Eve. A WFTY if you will. This is an addictive initiative whereby New Year’s resolutions are shunned in favour of nominating a single word that reflects your hopes and intentions for the coming year. Sort of like a personal mantra. An annual theme. A vocabularial self-definition.

Ned Nederlander and I immediately stole the concept and have imposed it on each other and every person we have spent a New Year’s Eve with ever since.

Selecting a single word to set the tone for the coming year is harder than it sounds. It requires an honest assessment of your multiple and varied goals and challenges, and a focussed definition of the common element of all of those. The best words are discreetly ambiguous and discursively applicable. Having just discovered that word, I think I will store “discursive” as a potential future WFTY.

In 2013 my word was STEADY. I chose it at the end of a tumultuous and wildly exciting year. A year previously we had moved across the world, leaving everything and everyone we cared about, and had plunged into a new culture, new language, new lifestyle, new group of friends, new opportunity, new challenge, new hairdresser. I rode every emotion imaginable day after day, sometimes minute after minute. Overall I loved it, in the way that sailors love to negotiate a storm, but it was a chaotic and crazily unpredictable year.

But the chaos and unpredictability of my first year here was nothing compared to Ned’s. He had struggled to get traction in his new professional role and so he walked through the door most evenings looking not only soaked and frozen, but also totally bewildered and utterly demoralised.

To cap it off, I suddenly had two surly adolescents stomping through my house as well. Overloaded with the adjustments they had made, the new experiences that had been hurled at them and the hormones that their bodies were involuntarily producing, they saw our new home as a place to offload their frustrations, confusion and excitement. Terrific.

We gave them some rope. They took it. And stretched it to breaking point.

Clearly, a year in to the adventure, someone needed to step up and be the grown-up in that scenario. That unfortunate person needed to take a firm hold of the tiller and see the family through the turbulent waters of life in a foreign land, far from home and without the support of trusted allies. Who would that be?

I was the last woman standing. Me, the flighty, spontaneous, ungrounded one in the family. The one who until then had made “emotional roller coaster” a daily mantra. The one who thought Con Sequences was just another boy to be ignored.

So I chose “steady” as my word for the year last year. And it worked. It stuck in my head and I relied heavily on it to steer us through what looks like being the middle year of our Dutch foray . Whenever panic rose in my gut throughout 2013, I chanted that word. When De Jongens tested me, I chanted it. When Ned slumped through the door after banging his head against yet another corporate brick wall, I chanted it. When I died of embarrassment yet again, because of my inadequate Dutch, and was tempted to give up on my linguistic folly, I chanted it. When I realised that life back in Australia was progressing perfectly well without us, generating a major crisis of personal relevance, I willed myself to stay steady.

And somehow we hit December 31, 2013 a little calmer and a little more balanced than we had been a year earlier. We were steadier somehow.

But then 2014 loomed large. Being steady suddenly seemed SOOO last year. I relished the opportunity to get back to my roots and be flighty and frenzied again. I needed a new WFTY by midnight on December 31. In the preceding weeks I had toyed with various options. At a dinner party on New Years Eve, embellished with the most incredibly spectacular and dangerously unsteady display of street fireworks I have ever seen, I announced that my word was “RENEW”. I retained however a nagging feeling that it was not in fact my true WFTY. Too little energy; too much arrogance.

Others around our table announced worthy WFTYs; challenge, persevere, embrace, consolidate.  My inbox pinged with commitments from friends in Australia. Health, surrender, gratitude. A friend confessed sheepishly that she had assigned “READ” to her ten year old, non-bookish son. He probably wanted "pizza".

One doesn’t decide on a WFTY; a WFTY has to decide on you. It has to embed itself in your sub-conscious, to niggle away until it can’t be ignored. But it seemed that my true WFTY was being a little tardy this year.

On the evening of January 1, it announced itself. My WFTY was “LIFT”.

When I announced my WFTY modification, Ned Nederlander’s eyes lit up. He glanced at my sagging breasts, my flabby backside and my drooping jowls and he smiled with satisfaction. “Great word”, he nodded.

I hurried to clarify my intention. In a 2000 metre rowing race, of which I have completed many, the first 500 metres tends to be fast and furious, the middle 1000 metres tends to be strong and STEADY (huh!) while the last 500 metres, as you bear down on the finish line, calls for a lift in both stroke rate and will power. You have to delve into new parts of yourself and give everything you can possibly give, collapsing on the finish line if necessary, confident that you could have contributed nothing more to the effort.

I explained that I am determined to make our last year in this country really count. I want to lift my effort and my commitment to squeezing the last drops out of the great privilege we have been offered in coming here. I feel compelled to lift the family energy levels, to lift my own expectations of what we might achieve together and importantly to lift my sights beyond our current horizon to a future life beyond this most amazing of cities.

It’s not too late to come up with your own WFTY, or come to think of it your own A-WOTY-V. I'd love to know what you decide - can I have a word please?