What the ‘words of the year’ tell us about ourselves

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Back in grad school, when people asked me what I was working on – a question every PhD student hates – I would respond, a little brusquely: “justice.” It had the upside of being true: my basic topic, justice theory, is that branch of political philosophy devoted to basic social structures and distributional regimes. Of course, a one-word answer was not what people were looking for. Mostly, they were looking for answers they could mock. Philosophy? You can’t be serious!

Apparently, I was ahead of my time. The annual Merriam-Webster list of influential words indicated last week that “justice” was the word of the year. This list, in contrast to the Oxford English Dictionary’s list of newly canonized words, does not reward novelty. Merriam-Webster is a descriptivist firm: The fact that people wonder about words is more important than what they mean. In this instance, "justice” floated to the top of the linguistic stew because of search-engine hits.

But what does social justice mean? The very idea is ridiculed by the more aggressive wing of the right who dismiss every person with an idea of a less retrograde world as a “social justice warrior.” (That’s SJW, for those who haven’t been following dolt-boards everywhere.) Racial justice? That’s another special agenda, obviously, since all lives matter! Criminal justice? Ha – is there such a thing, when a proven felon can’t be indicted because he is president of the United States? Economic justice? Well, ask the French yellow-vest protesters what is exercising their anger.

Also, in case we forget, there’s a noun form: Justice, as in the beer-swilling anger-clown who was recently confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court because of his record of calm, even-handed jurisprudential temperament. Put that idea in your calendars, dictionary makers – but try not to choke up just thinking about it!

Other top contenders for 2018’s word of the year include “toxic,” from those jokers over at the OED, and “misinformation,” from dictionary.com. You might think, as I did, that these words actually form a phrase that should garner some separate award, possibly modified further by the intermediate adjective “Chinese,” “Russian,” or “White House.”

But there is good news amid it all: Words still matter in this age of alternative facts and comprehensive denial of everything. “Nationalism” was a word of keen opposition during 2018, mainly because it has become code for far-right populism and white supremacy in some regions of the West. Isolationist and anti-Muslim politicians have used the word as a stand-in for racial purity and closed-border immigration, as have revanchist “America First” Trumpites.

Here in Canada, where the sitting prime minister is the son of a politician who spoke unironically of achieving a “just society,” a little more nationalism would actually be a good thing – that is, if it forges the a mari usque ad mari unity in our federation that continues to elude us. But that would be a kind of civic, not ethnic, nationalism.

Meanwhile, another contender for word of the year was “pansexual.” Surely, I’m not the only person to hear in that “pan” the name of the Greek demi-god of natural pleasure, flute-playing, and outdoor mischief, rather than the prefix meaning “all” and “more". Makes sense: Pan in both spirits, just seems like a good word to adopt right now. It probably won’t catch on, but let me be the first to suggest that we all try to be more pan in 2019: sexual, cultural, physical, racial, and political.

A final word that spiked over the past twelve months was “lodestar.” The usage was linked to the anonymous September New York Times op-ed about President Donald Trump, which some analysts thought had been penned by various insiders, including U.S. Vice President Michael Pence, America’s mute-in-waiting. “Lodestar” is one of his favourite words, evidently, and its appearance in the nasty byline-free article was thought to be either a clue or a set-up.

Well, maybe. In celestial navigation, “lodestar” usually indicates Polaris, the North Star, or some other fixed point by which you steer your ship. Lode, as the dictionary makers will know, is an Old English word that means path or roadway. In other words, lodestar is a metaphor for moral clarity and sure direction. Whatever his partisan proclivities, Mr. Pence understands this.

We may not always agree, in detail, what justice means. Yet, I think we all know it when we see it. Fishing guides have a saying that politicians should heed more often: know the way, go the way, show the way. There’s your answer, word-friends. Pan that.