August 4, 2018 – The context of a word - oligarch

         I subscribe to a Word of the Day email from Merriam-Webster and I find it entertaining and useful.  However, when the word Risorgimento, a noun, arrived in my mailbox a day or two ago, I paused and read the definition a few times and decided I would probably never use it in my life time.  If I actually hear it used in conversation or read it somewhere, I will look up the definition again to refresh my memory.  But, I purposely did not send it to brain storage.

         But, what caught my attention was the “Trending words” section.  Oligarch, pejorative, emoluments, exculpatory, etc., words used in current newscasts that people are looking up.

         It is always fun to see how much of a percentage higher the lookups are on those trending words.  It gives me an understanding of how I match up to other inquisitive minds that look up the meaning of words.  I often know what these words are, or they are vague to me and I like to review the definitions to cement the meaning of them for my future comprehension. 

         When the word insubordinate came in at 15,000% more than normal, I had to shake my head in disbelief.  In my opinion, everyone should already know what that word means especially if you have been in business and question the thought process of upper management. The phrase, “Are you being insubordinate asking a question like that?” pops into my head from experience. 

Then, I noticed abhorrent at 12,000% and that surprised me even more.  Hasn’t that word been used to describe every war in the last century? 

         On the other hand, I am comforted by only 1500% lookups on socialism – but that might be a false comfort.  Maybe during the Bernie Sander’s run for President it was a higher percentage.  I personally hope people know what a socialist is before they vote for socialism.

         Just for fun, I have listed several other trending words and their lookup percentage.

pejorative             2800%        

oligarch               6000%                 

emoluments         9100%        

exculpatory          8200%

socialism             1500%        

ideologue             6700%

epochal                6500%        

clemency             5800%

upholds               23,000%     

insubordinate       15,000%

abhorrent            12,000%     

promulgated        2000%

         Then, reading this morning’s small town newspaper, The Daily Courier, they had a guest column by Michael Jacobs, a community columnist, CEO of Jacobs Capital and on the faculty of UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, on the editorial page entitled: Tech companies should pay us for using our secrets and discussing the Tech companies in Silicon Valley. I noticed the following:

“Tech company oligarchs have built their empires by capturing and exploiting the average person’s personal, private information, often without their knowledge or explicit consent.  And certainly, without paying for it.” [my italics]

         According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, oligarch means “a member or supporter of a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” 

Another dictionary program lists it as:

1.    A ruler in an oligarchy.

2. [especially in Russia] a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence. [not my brackets]

And, Wikipedia explains it as: meaning ‘to rule or to command’ is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people.

And, then “Russian oligarch” is described by Wikipedia as:

“The Russian oligarchs (see the related term “New Russians”) are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth during the era of Russian privatization in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.”

And Russian privatization is described as:

Privatization in Russia describes the series of post-Soviet reforms that resulted in large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Most privatization took place in the early and mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, who assumed the presidency following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production but human labor.^[1] Under the Soviet Union, the number of state enterprises was estimated at 45,000.^[2]

In the later years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions on private property and introduced initial market reforms. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality and a collapse in GDP and industrial output.^[3]

Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives.^[4] This economic transition has been described as katastroika^[5] and as "the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history".^[6]

Above insert from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia

         Why am I bringing this up?  If you don’t know what a single word is, like oligarch, I suggest you research it.  You may not be getting the real picture or real understanding of what is being discussed in the news.  We, the voting public, need to be more informed than in the past with the 24/7 news we are inundated with.

NOTE: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day