And the word of 2022 is ...

THE story of a year is sometimes easy to identify: the financial crisis of 2008, the Brexit-Trump populist wave of 2016 or the pandemic of 2020. The most wrenching event of 2022 has been the war in Ukraine, yet those earlier stories have lingered in the headlines. For language-watchers, all that meant much new vocabulary to consider.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine obliged newsreaders to practise place-names from Kharkiv to Zaporizhia. It also introduced weapons previously known only to experts: MANPADS, NASAMS, HIMARS and the like. (Soldiers have long had a flair for acronyms – not just the official kind, but in contributions such as “fubar” and “snafu”.) A debate also developed about whether it is culturally or militarily appropriate to refer to “kamikaze” or “suicide drones”, drones being by definition pilotless. “Loitering munitions” lacks a certain snap.

The economic problems to which the war contributed brought new words too. The catchiest in that subcategory is “shrinkflation”, whereby companies hide price increases by downsizing products while keeping price tags unchanged. It is a perfect portmanteau (a word built from parts of others). It not only points to an important thing, but its component parts are transparent so that it requires little explanation. No wonder Shaquille O’Neal, retired American basketball star, used it in a pizza advertisement – a measure of success, perhaps.