Much ado about nothing?

Along with other commentators such as popular etymologist Mark Forsyth, I've been amused this week by reports of eyebrow-raising over the German language's inclusion of the English neologism der Sh**storm in its somewhat sacred Duden dictionary. Here in Switzerland, the term was also voted Word of the Year in 2012. The term denotes uncontrollable public outrage, usually online in the context of social media posts – and often insulting in its content. As I have mentioned in previous posts, neologisms interest me, since their ability to gain currency demonstrates a social need to construct a new term for a new concept. As such, they show that a language is healthy and can adapt to the culture it expresses.

But just in case we are at a loss to understand the kind of public outrage that might warrant use of the term, the torrent of excrement gushing forth in the wake of the plagiarism row engulfing Germany's erstwhile defence secretary Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and then more recently, use of the term in a speech by German prime minister Angela Merkel are cited as examples. An interesting piece in The Guardian seems to highlight German's preference for swearwords with faecal rather than sexual origins, though quite how or why the term has managed to float to the top of public consciousness and usage is not really examined. Predictably, there is no shortage of verbal diarrhoea in the comments sections attached to these articles.

In this particular case, I think we are once again witnessing the Internet-driven obsession with quantifying and describing everything anew. We clearly need to find new ways to feel anger and to display it, now that previous profanities and practices so obviously date from a time when media outlets defined outrage. These days, I increasingly find that the same outlets are now more than happy to solicit public commentary, stir gently and watch events unfold. But surely this is journalistic laziness masquerading as legitimacy.

I had never heard of the term until I read it in a Swiss newspaper a few weeks ago. I do not believe it is used widely in English. As such, any attempts to cite the word as further evidence of an English assault on the German language are misplaced. Other popular pseudo-anglicisms – das Handy (a mobile phone), der Showmaster (the host of a TV show), der Beamer (a projector) among others – are then used wrongly by German speakers, who believe the term to be an English loan word. In my own experience abroad, I have occasionally used one of the above words as a kind of shorthand to aid another person's understanding. However, I then always point out that the word is a purely German invention. I believe the same is true of this latest addition to the language.

A word in your year

With apologies for the slight hiatus, I return with news of the UK Word of the Year for 2012 – as chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary (usually Susie Dent and her colleagues). Now, the first thing to notice about this year's winner, omnishambles, as well as all the others that were in the running – Eurogeddon, Mobot, green-on-blue, Games makers, medal or podium (used as verbs) and second screening – is that the name of the award itself is telling. In most cases, these words will mean precisely nothing outside of a specifically UK context.

Omnishambles in particular appears to have emerged victorious despite its incredibly limited usage. Coined in the script of the British TV satire The Thick Of It, the word is defined as:  

'a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, and is characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations'.

Don't you just love the way the OED doggedly sticks to its -iz spellings, by the way? Anyway, as a British-made show (the US remake was abandoned), users of the word must surely be confined to fans of that show. The term was also used in the UK House of Commons in April 2012 in criticism of the budget, and in a further portmanteau coinage Romneyshambles – betraying one UK perspective on the US presidential election and its now defeated candidate. But in my view, these instances confirm the term's status as a niche word; much more ephemeral than the 12 months that the Word of the Year tag implies.

We should avoid attaching too much significance to what is, by the OED's own admission, a rather subjective epithet. Other neologisms will gradually gain currency and enter the dictionary on account of their widespread usage. The Word of the Year is chosen by a group of lexicographers sat around a table. As such, you could be forgiven for thinking that their choice is an attempt to impose their own interpretation of the zeitgeist on the rest of us. From the point of view of the term's intended meaning, the choice is also a strange one. Was 2012 really so bad?

If so, then surely Eurogeddon should be at the top of the pile, as uncertainty in the UK and Europe continues the longer the EU crisis persists. Choosing a word used to define anything at the extremes of human expression also means that word will quickly become moribund. If a greater catastrophe occurs next week, then we quickly have to find a new term to signify this latest nadir. Omnishambles will no longer be up to the job. This is exactly what happens with slang and youth language – where existing terms quickly lose their function as identity markers or intensity markers and are superseded by new terms. Just think of all the mild profanities that are now commonplace but would, at the very least, have earned you a clip round the ear in decades gone by!