Hello lockdown, my old friend; I’ve come to walk with you again. How are we all feeling? You may have awoken early in a state of uhtceare (pronounced uht-kay-ara; the ‘h’ is as in ‘loch’), an Anglo-Saxon expression for the ‘sorrow before dawn’ when you lie awake in the darkness and worry about the day ahead. Heaven knows, millions of us have cause, because our pinchfart chancellor Rishi Sunak has done nothing to relieve the plight of the excluded. Some of us may be barely sentient after watching coverage of the protracted count of votes cast in the American presidential election, shocked but not surprised to see President Trump latibulate, that is, hide in a metaphorical corner to escape reality.
Many of us will be more focused on our own government, annoyed with them for moodling, or squandering the opportunity afforded them during the first lockdown to get ahead of this pandemic. Our pinguescent (fat) prime minister must bear the blame for us being here. If he had gone for a circuit-breaker, as first the scientists and then Keir Starmer requested him to do weeks ago, we would not be in this longer and more restrictive lockdown now. Like the mumpsimus he is, Boris Johnson insisted that he was right when every bit of evidence pointed to the contrary.
By now most of us will be a little wiser to our government’s podsnappery, its insular complacency and blinkered self-satisfaction. Will we have to endure a daily dose of the bafflegab (incomprehensible or meaningless verbiage that confuses more than it clarifies) of daily government briefings? We certainly won’t tolerate scofflaws – those who flout the rules – like Dominic Cummings or Robert Jenrick this time around.
In case you’ve just read the three paragraphs above and wondered if I’ve swallowed a dictionary, the answer is – yes! As a writer, I wondered what I could do to divert you and contribute to relieving the more unpleasant aspects of lockdown. The answer lay in words. I remembered a campaign to ‘adopt a word’ run by the children’s charity I CAN way back in 2012 (the most glorious year to be British in modern times). I’d had my eye on ‘audacious’, but some celebrity or other got there before me, so I adopted ‘evocative’ and ‘eudemonics’ instead. That got me thinking: why not choose a word or phrase for each day of lockdown? Or both? Or more?
I came up with a daily compilation of:
- A political word to vent our frustrations with our elected representatives;
- A short Shakespearian quote that has passed into common usage, to remind us how much of a debt we owe to him for the expansion and embellishment of our language (and because I suffer from bardolatry);
- An exquisite word from our beautiful language; and
- A ‘mood’ word to help us focus on the positives in life.
Here are seven compilations for the first week of this four-week lockdown.
DAY 1
Political word
Blatherskite: a person who talks at great length without making sense.
Shakespearian phrase
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Hamlet, Act II, scene 2
Exquisite word
Zephyr: a soft, gentle breeze.
Mood
Jovial – let’s start as we mean to go on!
DAY 2
Political word
Empleomania: the manic desire to hold public office, at whatever cost. Expect to see President Trump display this, if (when) he loses.
Shakespearian phrase
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
Hamlet, Act IV, scene 5
Exquisite word
Serendipity: accidental good fortune.
Mood
Cerulean: deep, sky blue – in anticipation of confirmation of a Biden-Harris win.
DAY 3
Political word
Nutual: expressed merely by gesture, like the prime minister’s gratitude to the NHS.
Shakespearian phrase
“If music be the food of love play on.”
Twelfth Night, Act I, scene 1
Exquisite word
Iridescent: shimmering like a rainbow.
Mood
Vellichor: the distinctive smell of old books. It’s the weekend – enjoy a long read.
DAY 4
Political word
Garboil: confusion, turmoil, disturbance, discord, controversy – the perfect word for Sunday papers and political talk-shows.
Shakespearian phrase
“All that glisters is not gold.”
Twelfth Night, Act I, scene 1
Exquisite word
Glade: an open space in a forest.
Mood
Komorebi: light filtered through leaves. Find a public park where you can enjoy the last of autumn.
DAY 5
Political word
Illywhacker: a small-time confidence trickster (Australian origin).
Shakespearian phrase
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo & Juliet, Act II, scene 2
Exquisite word
Scintillating: sparkly, shiny and bright – also bright in the sense of being witty.
Mood
Lambent: softly bright or radiant.
DAY 6
Political word
Panglossian: adjective for someone given to what Liam Fox once described as ‘irrational positivity’.
Shakespearian phrase
“To thine own self be true.”
Hamlet, Act I, scene 3
Exquisite word
Soffit: the underside of an architectural feature, like an arch. Maybe this lockdown we can look at the architecture around us with new eyes, and discover something different?
Mood
Enchantment: to be highly delighted.
DAY 7
Political word
Snollygoster: an unprincipled individual who is driven entirely by political gain (19th century word).
Shakespearian phrase
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.’
Sonnet 18
Exquisite word
Yanquapin: a water-lily with yellow blossoms native to the east of North America.
Mood
Sylvan: the literal meaning is ‘abounding in woods and trees’ and in terms of mood means enjoying your daily walk which hopefully helps you to connect with nature in some way, even if it’s just taking more notice of the trees on your city streets.
With thanks to I CAN children’s charity, The Oxford English Dictionary, The Thesaurus, The Phrontistery, Open Source Shakespeare and, particularly for political terms, the always amusing tweets of locution-queen Susie Dent (@susie_dent).
