18
XXCE
‘’
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things
that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and
demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what
it has to bestow
COLOURCODED
Supercalifragilistic
From Trump becoming the US President to a disastrous British general elections, 2017 has been an eventful year.
But which word best defines it? Daily Telegraph columnists offer their pick
T
hink of the words that define our
turbulent times. More than ever in
the digital era whole life-changing
events instantly become reduced
to single pronouncements, shared
at lightning speed around the
world. Newly minted words over the past 12
months include: Grenfell, #MeToo, Bitcoin, May-
bot, Pestminster, Terror and Engagement.
Each one represents endless column inches
and television bulletins. Each one tells its own
story. It is why The Daily Telegraph chose to
launch its “Words Chosen Well” campaign, to
stress the importance of our quality journalism
in an era where more words are published on a
daily basis than ever before.
With the advent of “fake news” — which this
year the Collins Dictionary added to its 2017 edi-
tion — the words we choose to explain the world
around us have never mattered so much.
“Youthquake” was named as Oxford Dictionar-
ies’ word of the year 2017 — defining a “significant
cultural, political or social change” caused by
young people, it saw a 500 per cent increase in use
this year, partly due to young voters in the last
general election. Here, Telegraph writers de-
scribe the word, or phrases, which for them, best
encapsulates the year this has been.
Maybot
It was the year that the British public really
got to know Theresa May, and it’s fair to say
that the reception was mixed. Wound-
ed, some said fatally, by a disas-
trous election campaign, and
enmeshed in the toils of Brexit,
she seemed not “strong and
stable” but stiff and strug-
gling to improvise as politics
requires. The term Maybot,
coined at the end of 2016,
stuck. The subsequent 12
months have been defined
almost entirely by the PM’s
fate. Mere mortals might
have thrown in the towel. But
not the Maybot.
Weinstein
It’s a noun; doing a complete We-
instein. It’s a verb; to shameless-
ly Weinstein. It’s an adjective; a
Weinstein encounter. The name
Weinstein is now so indelibly
etched on our consciousness that it’s
become shorthand for sleaziness, in-
decency and abuse of power. Movie
Rainer Maria Rilke (1892-1910)
An elderly man walks down a road with his goods at Tangmarg in the Baramulla district of north Kashmir. The higher
reaches of Kashmir Valley received fresh snowfall through last fortnight as the plains were being lashed by rains in the
first major wet spell of the winter season.
mogul Harvey Weinstein’s dramatic fall from
grace due to accusations of sexual assault opened
the sluice gates for a slew of further unpleasant
revelations about other public figures. The one
positive is that the workplace line between
friendliness and harassment has been clearly de-
marcated by a single word.
Covfefe
Donald Trump has the best words. The very best
words. Everyone says he has the best words. Like
“covfefe”. That’s a terrific word, a fantastic word.
You know why it’s a fantastic word? Because
Donald Trump invented it. He invented it in May,
in a statement to his 44 million followers on Twit-
ter. “Despite the constant negative press cov-
fefe,” he wrote. And that was it. That was the en-
tire statement, from the world’s most powerful
man. People spent days asking, “What’s a cov-
fefe?” Trump never told them. He’s a busy guy.
That TV isn’t going to watch itself, you know.
Mental health
For me this year has been defined by it both pro-
fessionally and personally, from the incredible
work of Heads Together in the run up to the
marathon through to the continuing num-
ber of people who have found the courage
to speak out — including, of course, the
wonderful Prince Harry, whose happy
engagement news is proof that if you look
after your head, everything else follows.
Bitcoin
OK, so in amid the immensity of global
commerce, it is still but a tiny thing,
but more or less all of us have now
heard of it, even if the only things we
fully understand about this so-
called cryptocurrency is that its
price can fluctuate wildly and that
it is the asset of choice for drug deal-
ers and money launderers. Yet
everyone loves a mania, and being
wholly digital, this is a very mod-
ern version of a very ancient phe-
nomenon — a bubble not so dis-
similar to the tulip bulb mania of
17th-century Holland. Play by all
means; just don’t be there when the
music stops.
SAD
President Trump spent the year using
SAD as a sign-off to his tweets (often in
gIC
WORDSWORTHIES: Donald Trump, Theresa May (above) and Harvey Weinstein (far left) were
among those who shaped the vocabulary of the passing year
caps, or followed by an exclamation mark). It’s
his go to insult. He doesn’t use it for its primary
meaning — “sorrowful” — but to mean “inade-
quate”. For him it is a word of disdain and scorn,
whatever and whoever he disrespects is “sad”. In
March, The Washington Post published a listicle
titled 47 Things That Have Made Trump Sad,
which included everything from “fake news” or-
ganisations to Whoopi Goldberg’s acting.
Inappropriate
Almost any activity you could name between
men and women was suddenly “inappropriate”,
even if someone only decided 10 years later that
the “inappropriate” behaviour in question had
made them “uncomfortable”. Clear, morally de-
cisive words like “wrong” and even “sinful”
made way for this infinitely elastic, purse-lipped
term. Inappropriate touching could apply to any-
thing from putting a friendly hand on a col-
league’s shoulder to a quick snog under the
mistletoe. According to the fun-loving bunch at
the Northern Ireland police, this seasonal ice-
breaker raised issues of consent and might,
therefore, be rape. You might burst out laughing
THE TELEGRAPH CALCUTTA SUNDAY 31 DECEMBER 2017
PTI/S. IRFAN
at this ludicrous conflation of harmless flirtation
and sexual assault, but I regret to say that could
get you into trouble with the Inappropriateness
Monitors and their grim checklists. There are
still some times and places when inappropriate
will be, well, the appropriate word. You don't
wear a swimsuit to a funeral. Other things are too
grotesque to be merely inappropriate and many
powerful men who did them were rightly exposed
in 2017.
#Diversity
Fifty years after the race riots in Detroit —
brought to life again in the summer’s lacerating,
Kathryn Bigelow directed film of the same name
— racial inequality became a firelighter issue on
the normally fluffy social media platform of In-
stagram. From Lupita Nyong’o and Solange
Knowles to Naomi Campbell, furious discussions
about airbrushing dragged a long neglected prob-
lem in fashion to the fore. But for all the noise,
representation of people of colour actually
dipped by four per cent in 2017, according to a sur-
vey of 153 US magazine covers by Business of
Fashion. As usual, the biggest marker of social
IRONIES
UPALASEN
Not happy,
but new
It wasn’t a great year to begin with.
DeMon had pulled the rug beneath our
feet and things were never going to be
the same. A shaky people are easy to be
experimented upon, make impossible
demands of. For the rest of the year,
whenever the government issued a dik-
tat, the horde followed with minimum
questions. Link Aadhaar with bank ac-
counts, mobile accounts. Okayji. Rolling
out GST. Okayji. Slash small savings in-
terest rate. Okayji. Bring in the Banking
Bill with a bail-in clause, make vulnera-
ble people’s life savings. Oh okayji.
Hey Ram
The khadi calendar for 2017 featured PM
Modi at the charkha, spinning, instead of
the Mahatma. And all was topsy turvy.
This year, in the land of Gandhi, spread-
ing hate became the new normal. Accord-
ing to data collated by data and news por-
tal IndiaSpend, 2017 recorded 11 deaths
and 37 incidents related to cows and reli-
gion, the highest since 2010. 61 per cent
of the 152 victims were Muslims and 4
per cent Dalits. PMji did condemn it all.
He did say once (or was it twice?) that
killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti
is not on. All the while, farmers contin-
ued to suffer the pangs of DeMon, farmer
deaths continued. In the name of waging
a war against black money was this on?
The Year That Wasn’t
Could the year have been different?
Perhaps. If only our leaders didn’t try
to force us back into boxes we had long
crawled out of. The year would have been
different if they had engaged at all. In
2017 PMji took off for Sri Lanka, Ger-
many, Spain, Russia, France, Kazakh-
stan, Portugal, the US, Netherlands, Is-
rael, Germany, China, Myanmar and
Philippines. Chowkidars shouldn’t leave
their post so and PMji had promised to be
ours. The year would have been different
if leaders had respected leaders, in-
dulged their sons less and with iron hand
quashed “love jihad” that plagues India’s
daughters. Backslapping for the Triple
Talaq Bill continues, but little is said
about an entire people being deserted.
The year would have been different and
India too, if those in the hot seats had
chosen to be otherwise.
change came from the royals. Enter Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle.
Missteps
“Missteps” was among a rash of euphemisms
used by powerful men accused of inappropriate
sexual behaviour. The accused and their publi-
cists ransacked the thesaurus for words that
might soften the impact of allegations. John Las-
seter, head of Disney animation, took a six-month
sabbatical after owning up to “missteps” and
“unwanted hugs”. There was an attempt to focus
attention on the pain of the accused rather than
the discomfort of the alleged victim. Some just
tried to blame the Seventies. “Missteps” was
colossally generic and evasive.
Changed (as in “Nothing has...”)
My small role in affecting the course of the 2017
election campaign came from my question at the
launch of the Conservatives’ Welsh manifesto in
Wrexham in May three weeks before poll day.
It was the end of a torrid four days for Theresa
May, which saw the prime minister being forced
to drop her ill-thought plans for social care swift-
ly dubbed the “dementia tax”.
I was sitting in the press conference as four
TV journalists asked Mrs May about the climb-
down. Then Mrs May picked me. I tried a differ-
ent tack. “Mrs May, answer yes or no to this ques-
tion: will anything else in the manifesto change
between now and June 8?”
The PM stared at me. “Nothing has changed,”
she said, “nothing has changed.”
There was silence. Then laughter. It seemed
inexplicable that Mrs May was apparently deny-
ing the U-turn she had just announced. The To-
ries’ lead in the polls evaporated days later and
the party crashed to one of the biggest electoral
disasters in modern political history. Mrs May
was wrong — everything had changed.
Content
As in the noun, meaning “stuff”. It dogged my
2017 thanks to two flourishing entertainment
trends: television became more like cinema,
through ambitious series such as The Crown,
Twin Peaks and Mindhunter, while cinema be-
came more like television, via both the rise of
streaming services and those blockbuster fran-
chises with their episodic drip. Using “content”
as a catch-all term for beautiful things to watch
(or to listen to) is depressing, it’s like calling
three-star Michelin cuisine “supplies”.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH