Our Vocabulary Today

What else would you add to this list?

alone together 

asymptomatic 

at-risk populations 

case fatality rate

“Chinese” virus (Trump)

clinical trial

community spread

confirmed positive

contagion

coronavirus

COVID-19

Covidiot

crisis 

DYI antiseptic wipes

DYI masks

dying for the Dow

essential/nonessential businesses 

essential/nonessential travel
"face time"

“flatten the curve”

herd immunity

“hunker down”

immunity

lockdown

mask 

N95 masks

pandemic

PPE

press conference

quarantine 

reaching out

respirator
'rona

screening

self-isolation

self-quarantine

sheltering in place

social distancing 

“Stay home and save lives.”

stay-at-home order

symptomatic

vaccine

ventilator

vulnerable populations

virus

walking at a distance 

“We’re all in this together.”

working from home

Zoom

The Word 'Wash'

After two winters spent in the high desert, the word immediately conjures up for me not an image of wet laundry on a clothesline but a dusty, river-shaped opening through scratchy mesquite. The dry wash. Arroyo. “There were mule deer down in the wash this morning.” On some maps, washes (each, like a river, with its own name) are called ‘canyons,’ but that word to me still means something larger and much grander. 

I do hang my washed clothing and table linens and towels out on a line in the backyard, and sometimes I recall years when I only  dreamed of being at home to do such a thing, but I did not then imagine doing it before the sun came up, as I must often do these busy days. I did imagine chickens pecking around in the grass at my feet, and those chickens’ presence I still have to imagine.

‘Wash’ makes me think also of watercolor, an art medium I will never attempt, content (and sufficiently challenged) as I am with pen or pencil. I am happy, though, that others dare the mystery and chance effects of a watercolor wash.

“Wash that man right outta my….” How I loved singing and acting out that “South Pacific” musical number! 

Dishwasher. I have never had one. Instead, I am one. On good days, washing dishes is a meditative activity, something my hands do while my mind is free to roam. 

‘Washed-up’ is not a good way to be, but treasures may be washed up on shore by the waves.

The sun washes over a field of green wheat, waves of grain rippling dark and light in the spring breeze.

Laver. Se laver. Lavar. Lavarse. Je me lave les mains. And in Spanish? It does not come as quickly, and I wonder if it ever will.

Washed away, carried away, swept away — gone from here but gone altogether or simply deposited somewhere else? Edith Piaf with her new love, sweeping (rather than washing) away the old. In another French song, however, waves wash away footprints in the sand: La mer efface sur la sable….  

Washable. Temporary. Evanescent. Mysterious.

Another Word For It

Said around the dinner table on Saturday by one of our guests (actually, my son): “I took debate in high school, and that is not debate.” So true, we all agreed. I’ve been saying the same thing for I don’t know how many election cycles, and it’s never been truer than this year, and whenever the subject cannot be avoided, I have resorted to “so-called ‘debate’” as my verbal reference. But the modification of the noun was still unsatisfying.

There must be something else we could call it, I kept thinking. But what?

Confrontation? Yelling match? Reality TV? All seemed at least partially appropriate but, again, unsatisfying, failing to get at the tragic heart of the disappointment. It is, after all, American democracy and perhaps the future of political freedom in the world that are at stake.

During the Monday morning early radio news, the word came to me: debacle. I said it aloud, trying it out.

“What? What are you referring to?”

“Instead of ‘debate,’ you know. What to call it. I’m going to call it ‘debacle.’”

The de- prefix makes the substitution particularly appropriate and calls up adjectives such as debased, degraded, and demeaned. Like debased and debate, it also contains the voiced bilabial plosive, with which a speaker can vent emotions such as disgust and disdain – Bah! -- while the hard C shading into a final L hints at spectacle, calling up sound and fury and barkers and circuses. And, of course the dictionary meaning....

When political satisfaction fails, there is some satisfaction to be found in the right word.

Late in the afternoon, glancing at Facebook, I saw that one of my friends had used the phrase “debacle of a debate.” Yes, Linda! You, too? But can we trim away the official designation we all agree does not pertain and be content with a single word to sum up what took place?

Debacle: “a stunning, ruinous collapse or failure, often ludicrously calamitous.” (New World Dictionary, 4^th meaning)

Calamity inviting laughter? Joking at the approach to the gallows? Debacle!

Humans Lie; Hens Lay Eggs

The subject is not mendacity but “getting—or putting--horizontal.” The distinction is confusing in English, because the past tense of one verb is the present tense of the other. What a pickle!

“I think I’ll lie down for a while.” [Correct]

“Just lay the book over there on the table.” [Correct]

Two points need to be made about the simple sentences above. First, it isn’t a matter of humans versus the whole rest of the world (books and hens and such) but a matter of intransitive versus transitive verbs. (I heard those groans!) Unless there’s an object, you want the intransitive verb, in this case, to lie. That takes us to the second point, which is that dogs, when relaxing in front of the fire, are lying there, not laying, and the correct wording of the training command is “Lie down,” not “Lay down.” When, on the other hand, there’s an object following the verb, an egg or a book or whatever, you want the transitive verb, the one that can carry or transport its object.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that were the end of the story—but then along comes the pesky past tense.

“I lay down to rest and fell asleep for an hour.” [Correct}

“He laid the book carefully on the table, as if it were an egg.” [Correct: The addition of the egg was just to see if you were paying attention.]

Suddenly the spelling and sound of lay is correct for a human but only because it is the past tense of to lie, not to lay, the past tense of the latter being laid! We could take lie and lay into deeper waters, but why bother? Something tells me the distinction may vanish in my own lifetime.

Often, quite honestly, I almost wish I didn’t know the rules for using these verbs correctly, because the knowledge makes it so annoying to hear the incorrect usage. Embarrass my fellow human beings with public correction, I will not.

Okay, what about “Now I lay me down to sleep,” some of you are asking. Could it be that the confusion in English arises from this very source, the childhood prayer? It’s a tricky question, but note that ‘me’ in there. The speaker of this sentence takes himself or herself not only as subject (“I”) but also as object (“me”). Strictly speaking, it would be more proper to use a reflexive pronoun, i.e., “I lay myself down to sleep,” but of course the rhythm would then be entirely lost. Poetic license! Whether for rhythm or for rhyme, verse and song often depart from strict grammar, and there it’s just fine.