Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Weekly Scribblings #48: “Words of an Unprecedented Year”

Greetings, my dear poets and storytellers. I hope December (and January, too) brings us all sorts of wonders we need and many (wonderful things) we didn’t even know we wanted. We all need… something good to soothe our memories of 2020, don’t you think? So much happened this year, and most of it not great at all. Still, there has been a silver-lining or three: strangers spreading kindness, previously buried social issues coming into the light, and the Word of the Year going from 1 word to more than 40.

All right, so the last item in my listed trio might not truly make the silver-lining category for some of us, since more isn’t always better. But it certainly is different. The Word of the Year is most often just one word, or a phrase, or in the case of 2015 a laughing emoji 😂. Not in 2020. This year produced 47 words (in a 38-page report that can be downloaded HERE).

Today’s prompt was inspired by the “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. On our preview of this prompt, shared on our last Writers’ Pantry, I offered the words Allyship, Blursday, Covidiot, Doomscrolling, and Virtue-signalling, and then invited everyone to write new poetry or prose where the central theme revolves around one or more of the given words. But here is a longer list for you to choose from (all these words appear in this year’s report):  

Allyship, n. active support for the rights of a minority or marginalized group without being a member of it.

Anthropause, n. a global slowdown of travel and other human activities.

Blursday, n. a day of the week that is indistinguishable from any other.

Blended learning, n. a style of education in which students learn via electronic and online media as well as traditional face-to-face teaching.

Cancel culture, n. a culture in which there is a widespread practice of publicly rejecting or withdrawing support from people or things regarded as promoting socially unacceptable views.

Covidiot, n. a person who disobeys guidelines designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Doomscrolling, n. the action of compulsively scrolling through social media or news feeds which relate bad news.

Hygiene theatre, n. cleaning practices which give the illusion of sanitization without reducing the risk of infection.

Infodemic, n. a proliferation of diverse, often unsubstantiated information relating to a crisis, controversy, or event, which disseminates rapidly and uncontrollably through news, online, and social media, and is regarded as intensifying public speculation or anxiety.

Moonshot, n. an extremely ambitious and innovative project.

Virtue-signalling, n. the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.

Wokeness, n. the fact or quality of being alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.

Workation, n. a working vacation; a holiday during which one also works.

Please, choose one or as many of these words as you wish, and write new poetry or prose with a central theme inspired by your choice(s). This prompt will stay open for a week. One link per participant, please. If you choose to write prose, the word count should be 369 words or fewer. Let us create… with words!


18 comments:

  1. If we wanted a word to describe the year, yes 'unprecedented' is about right! 2020 took us into uncharted territory ... and perhaps poets and storytellers have always been the first to chart human experience.

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    1. I completely agree, artists are quite good at being the first historians of their times.

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  2. Sooo Clever!! All these neat "wanabe Words" to chose from. I fell in love with "Blursday",
    Off to sleep again after I read a but. Thank You, Magaly.
    ..

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    1. There's something about Blursday! LOL. A lot of us have chosen that one.

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    2. Wannabe? If so, I think they've gone beyond that since most of them have made it into the dictionary. And yes, Jim, like Rosemary said, there's definitely something about Blursday!

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  3. Decided to give an American sentence a whirl for this prompt. I'm pretty happy with it.

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    1. I read your American sentence, and wow! It's magnificent. And true, too.

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  4. I love the word "blursday," but when I sat down to write on that I ended up with well over 1,000 words! "Blended learning" is an odd one for them to include. That's nothing new. Homeschool families have been doing that for years, decades even at this point!

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    1. I don't think that that they include words because they are new or just in use. Many of the words and phrases are there because their usage has increased significantly, I believe, and/or they are being used differently. "Take-a-knee" is a good example of this. It's not a new word at all, but these days it can't be said without conjuring images of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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  5. A safe and Happy Wednesday to all

    Much💜love

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  6. I was going to write something else for this, but it was not happening. Good prompt, though!

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    1. We give what we have. We can't do more than that. So glad you liked the prompt. ;-)

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  7. It has been TOO long since I have written poetry and visited all of you. I have missed you.

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  8. Sooo... we weren't supposed to use the word but allude to it? (sorry, I seem to often comprehend the intent of prompts after the fact.

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    1. I think either is fine! We were to be inspired by it, which doesn't preclude actually using it.

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