These are new words or phrases that have caught my eye. My definition of a new word is one which is not in the Macquarie Dictionary online.
Some words seem to have more significance than others in terms of reflecting changes in the Australian culture, so I will give each word a Zeitgeist rating (ZG) within a range of 1-10.
If you disagree with the rating that I give, please argue your case in the comment field provided.
I would love you to contact me if you have made any new word discoveries of your own.
This is a new treatment for COVID-19, also referred to as the COVID antiviral pill or, even less frequently, as the COVID-19 antiviral pill. Its official name is molnupiravir. It is an anti-virus agent, originally developed to treat influenza.
ZG: 9
It is hoped that this will make quite a difference in how we cope with COVID so it will be a household term.
Read MoreThis is an exclamation with the sense of ‘Gotcha!’ or “Just kidding!” which we have belatedly picked up from American English where it first appeared in the 1980s.
ZG: 8
Fashion in language is important. Refreshing and revitalising your exclamations with this can give it an added zing. Perhaps.
Read MoreThis is the situation at a hospital which is overwhelmed by the number of patients arriving by ambulance. They cannot process them fast enough in emergency so the ambulances are forced to park and wait, sometimes for hours, until a bed becomes free.
ZG: 8
This has become important as an indicator of the unsustainable pressure on hospitals as COVID cases rise.
Read MoreThe internal wave is more akin to the pattern created by a ball rolling off a step and then bouncing back up, falling and bouncing up repeatedly.
ZG: 4
A scientific term that had some general currency in the news reporting of the Indonesian submarine that sank.
Read MoreAustralia has joined those countries labelled ‘climate laggards’ in the last couple of years. It seems that climate laggard has followed in the wake of technology laggard, a popular phrase of five years ago for those businesses and organisations that refused to keep up with the changes brought about by the IT revolution.
ZG: 7
Obviously we don’t like to hear ourselves described as climate laggards, but, as things stand, we should probably get used to it.
Read MoreFin as the shortened form of financial is getting to work and making new compounds. First we had fintech. Now we have finfluencer which is a blend of the fin- prefix and influencer.
ZG: 7
Will we be referring our financial queries to influencers rather than to our accountants in the future?
Read MoreThis is a new variant of the COVID-19 virus as described in the media with the emphasis on how much more infectious or deadly it might be.
ZG: 6
This is an attempt to push back against the unnecessary panic created by media reports of new variants. Whether it will bring the heart rate of the general public back to somewhere near normal remains to be seen.
Read MoreThe concept of the fixated person as a person worthy of scrutiny by the police was one which arose from the Lindt Café siege.
ZG: 5
A legal term which will pop up from time to time. Rarely, we hope.
Read MoreThe weather event that brought this to our attention this year occurred in Canada where a heat dome settled for five days, causing hundreds of deaths, contributing to wildfires, and wreaking havoc on marine life.
ZG: 6
We are likely to have heat domes in Australia this summer (certainly more heat waves are predicted) so we will become more familiar with this term.
Read MoreIt seems that it is time for slang names for the police, such as the cops or the rozzers, to make way for the latest American import which is the popo. This is a Californian slang term from the 1980s which has taken a little while to become popular here.
ZG: 7
This one is clearly a bit of fashionable slang that is on the rise.
Read MoreThis is a state of mind in which you are confused, foggy, forgetful, and basically incapable of putting two thoughts together. The reason is that humans need sociability to keep their brains active.
ZG: 6
This joins a set of ‘brains’ affected by circumstances — baby brain, chemo brain, bushfire brain, and preggie brain.
Read MoreKnown as HITH, or sometimes just HIH, this is a system for the treatment of patients in their own homes rather than in hospital. It has been developing over the last decade and is shown to be safe and effective for a range of illnesses.
ZG: 9
This is very much under discussion at the moment as anxiety about the capacity of our health system to deal with a COVID surge increases.
Read MoreFor people who have been caught up in a sect or particularly authoritarian religion, leaving behind the habits of mind inculcated into them in their religious period can be extremely difficult. It can have lasting consequences.
ZG: 5
This particular syndrome has a higher profile than usual at the moment in the discussion of compensation for victims of abuse who were in the care of religious institutions.
Read MoreIn August last year we learned that the PCR test, to which we were slowly adjusting , was too slow to be helpful when the pressure was on in tracking and tracing. We need a rapid test. This has now been developed and renamed as the rapid antigen test.
ZG: 6
While the benefits of the test are still being questioned, it won’t become a common experience for us all.
Read MoreThis system, in which a shopper orders a product online and then collects it at the store, has been in place in Australia since 2017 but its popularity has grown hugely over the last year thanks to the pandemic.
ZG: 8
Our experience of online shopping is developing and diversifying at a remarkable pace.
Read MoreThis is one of those rare words which, having been coined once, is then coined again with a different meaning. The first time round (in the 1970s) meta-verse meant ‘a network of universes’.
ZG: 4
Still a word for the science fiction fans and those who are interested in trying to detail how such a world might work and what the consequences would be for the human race.
Read MoreThis is a view of the world in which you regard yourself as the main character in some filmic version of your life. For some this is empowering, allowing them to see themselves in a more positive light and be more assertive. For others the main character syndrome simply means that you hog the limelight and everyone else is in the supporting cast.
ZG: 8
This one has taken off on social media. Obviously it is a personality type that is recognisable.
Read MoreA newspaper article assures us that COVID anger is real, and certainly a few friends have admitted to feeling this and being glad that it has a name. It is the boilover of repressed anxiety, frustration and depression.
ZG: 8
This second year of the pandemic feels darker than the first, the sense of togetherness being replaced by isolation and anger.
Read MoreInitially we were concerned about flattening the curve, but then we faced a choice – to open up the country and live with Covid or to keep pursuing the goal of zero cases by stepping up our tracking and tracing.
ZG: 10
This I hugely important at the moment and will continue to be the only topic of discussion for the next months.
Read MoreWay back at the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of discussion about the reproduction number of the virus which I dealt with under the heading Ro. Now we have the further subtlety of the Reff (effective reproduction number), also written Re or R (t).
Read More
