In recent times flying foxes have come too close to human beings and other animals. And so we have had a succession of new viruses that have been passed on by the bats, such as Hendra virus and lyssavirus. Langya virus is the latest, a virus belonging to the newly identified Henipavirus genus comprising negative-stranded RNA .

ZG: 4

After the brief flurry of anxiety we have lost all interest in this one.

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Most people have, in the past, associated this with pregnancy or a hangover. Or lack of sleep or medications. But now it is a recognised condition of long Covid so that the term has moved from being a jokey colloquialism to an item of medical jargon.

ZG: 6

It is still early days in understanding long COVID and pinning down its symptoms but brain fog is something that all sufferers seems to exhibit.

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Grey corruption is the channelling of favours towards friends and relatives, which, while not illegal, does cross the bounds of propriety and possibly short-change the taxpayers. Grey corruption is a lowering of the high standards expected of the people who represent us in parliament.

ZG: 5

This has been much discussed for a short period of time and will no doubt be forgotten again.

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These are PFAs, per- and polyfluoroalkyls, which have a strong carbon-fluorine bond which can resist grease and water. The original forever chemicals were in Teflon but now there are thousands of non-stick, stain-repellant and water-proof products containing PFAs developed from the original.

ZG: 4

We seem not to have learnt our lesson about the danger of spreading dangerous chemicals throughout the environment.

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It. is evident now that about one third of the people who get COVID-19 will experience COVID rebound, that is, the recurrence of the presence of the virus in their systems to the extent that they test positive for it. Some of them have symptoms again, others do not.

ZG: 6

There is increasing awareness of the possibility of getting a COVID rebound and of the rather nasty consequences.

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This first came up for widespread discussion in the furore that surrounded the lab in Wuhan It was believed that gain-of-function research had been undertaken there, and that this may have lead to the development of the COVID-19 virus which may have then escaped the lab.

ZG: 4

It is only really because of the notional link between the Wuhan laboratory and the COVID-19 virus that this word has entered the public domain.

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This is a term that has been around for a while. It had a surge in popularity in the 1960s and again in 2013. It has made its way into education jargon and politics in Australia.

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The CSIRO has just published information on 139 new species in Australia which they have now classified. Among them is the babysitter ant which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the caterpillar of the bulloak jewel butterfly, a beautiful butterfly, the second rarest in Australia and in danger of extinction.

ZG: 3

It’s nice to have a story of happy symbiosis in the ant/butterfly world.

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Naarm is the Indigenous name (in two languages spoken by groups who are part of the Kulin Nation) for the area around Melbourne, and so it has been adopted generally as an alternative name for Melbourne.

ZG: 5

At the moment this is a Melbourne thing, but the licence to wear daggy clothes in the name of fashion is always appealing.

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If you see someone wearing earphones with a dreamy expression on their face, they could be experiencing the effects of a digital drug. Also called the binaural beat, the digital drug is an effect created by listening to two synthesised sounds of slightly different frequencies, one in each ear, the brain creating the illusion of a third sound which occurs initially as a regular beat.

ZG: 4

I look forward to experiencing this.

ZG: 7

Cures for stress and anxiety are much sought after at the moment so this latest trend will up the word frequency while reducing the sound frequency.

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This is an unmanned submersible used to transport drugs, spometimes called a narco-sub or an underwater drone. The person controlling it could be anywhere in the world but the drone will follow its set path to its destination.

ZG: 4

There is not much awareness of narco-drones in Australia yet but there could be in the future.

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We give names to things that matter to us. Occasionally names are created for things that ought to matter to us and wishcycling is one of these. It seems that it is a bad habit that too many of us have, to throw things in the recycling bin, not because we know that they are recyclables but because we hope they are, that being the most convenient solution for us.

ZG: 4

A word that is being foisted upon us to do us good. Will we listen?

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This is a blended word combining flop and blockbuster. It is therefore a film or TV program intended to be a big production and a big moneymaker which turns out to be a nothing.

ZG: 4

A useful word for a film and TV critic but perhaps not generally appealing.

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The new sense of soft life does not involve idleness. It was arrived at by contrast with a hard life, one of strain and trouble and stress. The choice to soft life means that you remove all causes of stress and anxiety but only so that you can pursue the things that you want to do and that you do with pleasure.

ZG:

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This is an overriding sense of disappointment with the straight world of heterosexuality which has been described as a prison with no way out and contrasted with the apparent liberation and adventurousness of the LGBTIQ+ world.

ZG: 4

While there are probably a number of heterosexual couple who might make the standard if somewhat negative jokes about their situation, they would not use this academic term for it.

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As Volodymyr Zelensky has worked the phone, drumming up support for Ukraine from the world, we have become familiar with the term readout. This is the official text record of a telephone conversation between two political leaders or others in the realm of foreign affairs. Naturally such summaries of the conversation have to be done with great care.

ZG: 5

There has been an increasing number of significant telephone conversations for which we have needed the readout. The alleged conversation between Putin and Trump during the election campaign is the one that I would like to have.

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We certainly hope that we won’t need to use the term terafire, a fire burning through more than 1 million hectares. The tera- prefix means ‘monster’.

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These are the new sub-variants of Omicron which have emerged and been identified by the WHO. They have significant differences in their spike proteins from the earlier variants of Omicron which means that they can evade the antibodies provided in previous vaccines.

ZG: 4

They should be a household word but they are not.

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This word which has been part of English since Anglo-Norman times has acquired a new meaning in the jargon of life coaches who teach their clients that there is a way for them to fulfil their dreams and become the person they think they might be if they follow some simple steps. The life coach promises that they can manifest their hopes and ambitions if they wish hard enough.

ZG: 6

Given the popularity of personal coaches and life coaches and business coaches, manifestation is on the increase.

ZG: 5

At least half of us have life coaches these days so I am guessing at a fifty per cent frequency.

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As we have all pondered what is happening to our environment, we have become much more familiar with the concept of an ecology, that is, the interrelationship of organisms with the environment. This has proved to be a concept worth exploring in a range of situations, and so we have the ecomap, a visual rendering of the relationships that an individual or a family have with the community in which they live.

ZG: 4

A term that is confined to a specialist context but an interesting extension of the idea that we all live in an ecology.

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