I was reading an article that said that the Dutch people have about 700 new words in their lexicon, all related to the coronavirus. Here is just a few of them:
Huidhonger / skin hunger: a longing for human contact while in isolationAnderhalvemetereconomie / six-feet-economy: an economy constructed to avoid spreading coronavirusHoestschaamte / cough-shame: the anxiety one may experience about possibly triggering a panic among the people nearby when making a coughing sound for whatever reasonCoronahufter / coronajerk: shopper at a supermarket or store who violates the six-foot social distance prescription or other safe-keeping protocol.Druppelcontact / spray-contact: exchange of little droplets when sneezing or coughing, esp. as source of infectionOnthamsteren / dehoarding: processing long-stored shelf-stable food into a meal.Straatschaamte / street-shame: the embarrassment someone experiences when being out for urgently necessary errands during lockdownToogviroloog / blather-virologist: dilettante who spreads false or unsubstantiated information about the virus, its transmission, or its treatment (CNN)
This isn’t a new thing. I read this in an article about how wars have brought new words and new meanings to words, into our regular, every day vernacular.
“Through wars, some words have changed or garnered new meanings while others were newly coined for specific places and things. During the Civil War, “skedaddle” became “skeet” or “scoot.”
In World War I, the word “lousy,” which was intended to describe lice infestations, came to mean weary. In the same token, “trench coat” — a jacket worn in the trenches during battle — to this day remains an iconic outerwear style. “Jeep” came from the letters “G.P.” emblazoned on the side of each general purpose vehicle used during World War II.”- (Business Insider)
Why do we create new words, particularly in hard times such as wars and pandemics?
The same article says this:
“War words are often invented to describe things that are brutally indescribable, bring humor to things that are not funny, and create designations for things that are otherwise unidentifiable.” (Business Insider)
I think that is why I love writing. It is the act of trying to describe, to put meaning to, to bring a familiar understanding, and to even bring humor out of an all-encompassing experience. Writing tries to bring order and sense and logic and description and familiarity and emotional inclusion, to any striking event in our lives. The other creative arts do the same thing. A photographer tries to capture the emotion, the beauty, the total awesomeness of one single moment. The same can be said for the works of an artist, a musician, a film maker or a dancer. The creative arts try to translate life, so that the precious moments are not forgotten. There is an argument that the minute you pin a description or a meaning or a perspective on to an experience or on to an object, you have lost the essence of just experiencing it. You have limited your experience. You have diminished the object. That may be the case, but there is still great satisfaction in trying to cage in any happening, with emotional description (which is what I think, creativity really is). The creative product is the leftover heavy pebbles, as the constant movement, of the stream of change, moves forward rapidly into the distant unknown. As travelers, we can pick up the pebbles and have a remembrance of where we have been, what we have felt. We get a small glimpse, of a standstill of one moment, of any one experience. We get to pick up a pebble, put it in our pocket, and thus, we get to keep a tiny sliver of any one particular major (or minor) experience, on our person, forever.
