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

February 4, 2018 – A latest trending word - pissant

         I have crawled out of my cold/flu cave and have wandered out to my computer.  I am not over it yet, but I am trying to get back to the land of the living.  Of course, my mailbox is full of emails.  Most of them are ‘self-generated’ by my signing up for things –  a perfect example is the Word of the Day I mentioned last month.

         I thought checking those would be an easy way to get back into the swing of using my brain cells to think, and it clearly was.  During my flipping through the words of the day, I happened to notice on a sidebar to the right called TRENDING NOW  with the following list of words:

redaction

spurious

malfeasance

pissant

furlough

[invitation] SEE ALL

         This is interesting because it indicates a rise in lookups when the word is used in recent media.  Lookups rose 3100% on spurious; lookups rose 115,000% on pissant.  WOW, the 115,000% number caught my attention because I was already familiar with the word.  I learned it as a youth. 

         I found this trending now tab fascinating as “Brady takes umbrage with ‘pissant’ comment”.  That is Brady, as in Tom Brady of the New England Patriots.  We happen to have the Super Bowl today, [and the Patriots are my team] so of course, I clicked on it.  I didn’t have any doubt what it meant, I just was curious how it came about that it was one of the trending words. I understand it started by Alex Reimer the radio personality calling Brady’s daughter, “an annoying little pissant” and then Brady shouting back  “You’re a d_____ little pissant”. 

An old fashioned tit-for-tat name calling!

The word, pissant, is sort of like another noun, sycophant. It pops up in those heated discussions for-or-against you, yours, or your enemies.  It becomes etched in your brain and you can’t wait to use it again in your touché in an argument.

I’ve had my amusement for the day and simply wanted to share with you a great little go-to tab to kill time, or spice up your conversation with others. 

Try it, you might like it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/see-all

January 7, 2018 -         Word of the Day

         Every once in a while, I really sit back and appreciate what the internet can do for you personally, in your job, or just about in everything.  Yesterday I was looking up a word to make certain that I was using the right word, something I do often, and I ended up at the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary site.  The only reason I no longer hesitate to use an on-line dictionary is that I have dual screens.  [I never liked reducing a screen to get to another one – just not my style.]  Those processes just didn’t feel seamless to me.  Often I would prefer to just grab my nice dictionary and flip through the onionskin pages for the exploratory experience.

         Years ago, when I was a teenager, I remember my Mom saying to my brother, who was writing a paper for class work, when he asked how to spell something,

         “Look it up. The dictionary is your best friend.” Mom called from the kitchen as she was making dinner.

         “If I don’t know how to spell it, how can I look it up?”  He cried with impatience.

         Sitting in the living room, doing my own homework, I felt his pain in the situation and agreed with him. [This was back in the 1970s way before word processing. All writing was the old-fashioned way – either by hand or on a typewriter.  Since we didn’t own a typewriter, our school papers were written  by hand.]

Years later when I was well into my career I found a quaint little book called “Misspelled” which if I remember correctly had a cartoon of a worm on the front of it, and I snapped it up, just in case I was stymied at spelling.  I re-read that book occasionally to improve my spelling, and it is tucked in my library of books somewhere.  Too bad, we didn’t have that little book when we were in school.  It would have made our lives easier.

         These days, with the WORD program as one of the major data input frame works, one gets a squiggly red line under a word when it doesn’t come up in the standard dictionary.  I feel it causes laziness, but on the other hand, it does allow the creative juices to work unencumbered, which is an excellent tradeoff. 

My first dozen or so letters to my Mom when I moved away from home, were returned to me marked up with a red pen covering both grammar and spelling.  She’d circle misspelled words and write “spelling” in the margin.  It didn’t take me long to realize good spelling and grammar along with good manners were expected of me.  When I wrote letters too her and I didn’t have my dictionary handy, I would circle the word and put a Sp.?  near it so that Mom knew I didn’t have my “favorite friend” dictionary handy.  I received fewer letters returned with red ink.

Later when I moved to this county, my neighbor’s little girl doing homework asked,

“How do you spell . . .”

“Look it up in the dictionary.  The dictionary is your best friend.” I said immediately.  In that instant I realized I may have overstepped my boundary.  Her Mom’s smile assured me I hadn’t.

“Here is the dictionary, look it up,” her Mom said.

“I can’t if I don’t know how to spell it . . . .” the little girl started to whine.

“Sure you can, you look for it like it sounds and if you can’t find it, we will help you.”  I chimed in.

After some effort the child looked up and paused not sure what to say because she couldn’t find it.

Her Mom said,

“How did you think it is spelled?”

After a little coaching of the different ways the beginning of that sound could be found in the dictionary, the little girl found the word.  The Mom coached her again,

“Read the definition out loud to us,” Mom called.

Countless times, I would be visiting this Mom and her little girl and she would ask how to spell a word and I would reply,

“The dictionary is your best friend,” with the complete approval of her Mom.

Years later the little girl, now a young woman, was introducing me to one of her friends and mentioned to her,

“This is my neighbor. She told me ‘The dictionary is my best friend’. 

I thought it was a lovely way to be introduced even if they did smirk at each other and giggle.



Where am I going with this blog today?  Yesterday I signed up for the Word of the Day to be sent to my email address from the Merriam-Webster’s website.  It is fun.  Not only do they send you a word of the day, but you can hear it correctly pronounced when you press the speaker icon.  That is the best part, you learn how to correctly pronounce it. 

Additionally, they have spelling tests that are fun too – if you like a personal challenge. Sure, it can be a great time waster if you need one, but you are learning something at the same time, so – is that really a waste of time?

The dictionary is still my best friend.