Word Play - Language mutation

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, January 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s George Grant with this month’s enormously playful Word Play. Just the vax, ma’am!

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: Whether you are vaxxed or unvaxxed, jabbed or boosted, halfcinated or fullcinated; whether you are a vaxcinista or an anti-vaxxer, half-vaxxed or double-vaxxed; whether you have vaccine-hesitancy or vaccine-ardency; whether you hold to vaxxodoxy or to vaxrilege, by now you undoubtedly know that the language relating to vaccines and vaccinations has permeated all our lives over the course of the year just past. Dictionary editors, lexicographers, grammarians, writers, and wordsmiths rarely have the opportunity to witness a single topic so dramatically reshape our language and become such a prominent feature of our everyday vocabulary—but in 2021 the rollout of the COVID inoculation along with all its attendant political, economic, cultural, medical and theological controversies, did just that. It should come as no surprise then that, “vax” has been named the “Word of the Year” by both Oxford University Press and Merriam-Webster.

Of course, vax is not a new word. It is a colloquialism shortened from either vaccine or vaccination as a noun and vaccinate as a verb. It passed into the English language from the Latin at the end of the 18th century to describe the pioneering work of Edward Jennner to develop an immunization treatment for smallpox. In imperial Rome the adjective ‘vaccīnus’ literally meant, derived from a vacca, or cow. Jenner borrowed the Latin expression variolae vaccinae to describe his experimental treatment. Neologisms began to proliferate almost immediately to describe skeptics of the inoculation protocols: anti-vaccinists, anti-vaccinators, and anti-vax all made their appearance early in the 19th century. In an 1812 letter, Jenner himself acknowledged, “The Anti-Vacks are assailing me … with all the force they can muster in the newspapers.”

The more things change the more they stay the same. Our dissonant public discourse over vaccine passports and vaccine mandates, vaccine trials and vaccine rollouts, vaccine efficacy and vaccine conspiracy has proven to be a boon to creative nomenclature.

When celebrities and social media influencers began posting selfies while getting their shots, the photos were quickly redubbed vaxxies. Post-jab travel came to be known as vaxx-i-cations while post-inoculation side-effects became vaxxidents. Anti-vaxxers were derisively labeled spreadnecks and covidiots while proponents were called vaxxionados and the innoculati. The uncanny ability to discern or intuit who might be vaxx-compliant as opposed to those who might be vaxx-resistant has been described as vaxxdar. And the jab itself has been humorously rechristened the Fauci-ouchie.

The Scots literary critic and classicist, Gilbert Highet reminds us, “Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.” If we didn’t know that before, we most assuredly do now.

I’m George Grant.

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