After surviving the suffocating, pervasive Christmas season, journalists turn to year-in-reviews. At the conclusion of this year, and God be thanked for ending it, no one wants to remember 2020, Annos Horribilus. But word-nerds look for the new word introductions, most used and most looked-up words, and word-of-the year reviews and that is my solace. Well, not the word of the year from the American Dialect Society which for 2020 is covid which we’d all like not to think about. Merriam-Webster selected pandemic a word which at least has an interesting etymology linking pan and demos. It was looked-up more than 100,000 times in one day. I like the M-W but I don’t like their acceptance of lookup as word acceptable in formal writing but I guess they would know. I’m going for the spelling look-up. I rather liked learning about a neologism from the past. In an article in the NYT Sunday Review 27 December, Emma Goldberg brings up blockbuster a new word from 1942. Now people refer to blockbuster movies, and there was for years a now defunct Blockbuster movie rental chain. Anything that is unique and spectacular might be referred to as a blockbuster. A blockbuster is also a racist real estate seller who disrupts markets with a scheme to lower prices from a fear of racial minority purchases. The illegal real estate practice sense of blockbuster uses the “block” part meaning a city block. That is also the sense that the original term uses. During World War two, there were developed and apparently used bombs that could destroy entire city blocks, hence blockbuster bombs.
Merriam-Webster also notes a 24,800% spike in look-ups for schadenfreude, not a new word at all, but for many it was a wonderful way to accurately describe our delight at the demise of Donald Trump. Loser of the Year 2020.
Two Strikes 