27 December 2021
As in past years, I’ve come up with a list of words of the year. I do things a bit differently in that I don’t try to select one term to represent the entire year. Instead, I select twelve terms, one for each month.
January: insurrection: The crowd storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021
January: insurrection. Egged on by President Trump, a mob stormed the US Capitol as the presidential electoral votes were being counted in an attempt to keep Trump in power. Its reverberations were felt throughout all of 2021.
February: jab: a researcher in mask and gloves holding up a vial of COVID-19 vaccine
February: jab. The Covid-19 vaccines started to become widely available in February 2021, and jab had a brief moment in the sun.
March: hate crime: a crowd of protesters, with an Asian woman in the foreground holding a placard that reads, “Stop the Hate. We are not your scapegoat.”
March-1: hate crime. I cheated a bit and chose two terms for March. On 16 March, a gunman engaged in a shooting spree in Atlanta killing eight, including six Asian women, and injuring one other.
March: Ever Given: satellite image of the Ever Given, a large container ship, run aground and blocking the Suez Canal
March-2: Ever Given. On 23 March, the container ship Ever Given ran aground in and blocked the Suez Canal for a week, disrupting worldwide shipping traffic.
April: accountability: a crowd of Black Lives Matter protestors demonstrating for justice for George Floyd
April: accountability. On 20 April, the Minneapolis, the Minnesota police officer who suffocated George Floyd was convicted of murder.
May: ransomware: gasoline pumps with “out of service” signs due to lack of fuel
May: ransomware. On 7 May, the Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware cyberattack, shutting down the pipeline until a payment of some $4.4 million was made and causing fuel shortages in southeast US.
June: residential school: Undated photo (1940s?) of Indigenous children and nuns posed in front of a Canadian residential school building
June: residential school. On May 27, 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. By the end of June, an additional 943 unmarked graves had been found at other residential schools in Canada.
July: billionaire: a SpaceX rocket blasting off from its launch pad
July: billionaire. In July, billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson displayed their enormous wealth and diminutive genitalia by rocketing into space on board spacecraft belonging to their companies Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.
August: Taliban: night-vision image of Major General Chris Donahue, the last US soldier to leave Afghanistan, stepping onto a C-17 transport plane
August: Taliban. On 30 August as the last the last US troops left Afghanistan, the US’s longest war ended with a Taliban victory.
September: SB 8: protestors in front of the Texas capitol builidng demonstrating against Texas Senate Bill 8 which, in effect, outlawed abortion in Texas
September: SB 8. Texas Senate Bill 8 went into effect and effectively outlawed abortion in the state of Texas. It also created a “vigilante” right to sue, allowing the law to avoid scrutiny by the federal courts.
October: supply chain: stacks of shipping containers at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey
October: supply chain. The pandemic created a perfect storm of decreased manufacturing, delays in shipping, and increased demand by people stuck at home for nearly two years, resulting in empty store shelves and containers of goods piling up in ports.
November: booster: vials of Covid-19 vaccine
November: booster. The United States authorized a third booster dose of the Covid vaccine for all adults in November.
December: omicron: graph showing the variants of the Covid-19 virus, from alpha through omicron
December: omicron. We may be through with Covid, but Covid isn’t through with us.
Postscript: buttered Jorts: a faux-product called “I Can’t Believe He Got Buttered” featuring an orange cat licking its lips
Postscript: buttered Jorts. I recognize that this list is mostly a downer, but December has seen the tale of Jorts the Cat and how he got “buttered” take over the internet. So, let’s end on a fun and silly note.
Image credits:
2021: Freepik.com. Permitted use with attribution.
January: TapTheForwardAssist, 2021. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
February: US Department of Defense, 2020. Public domain image.
March (hate crime): Becker1999, 2021. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
March (Ever Given): Pierre Markuse, 2021, contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
April: Guettarda, 2020. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
May: Famartin, 2021. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
June: Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.
July: NASA, 2020. Public domain image.
August: US Department of Defense, 2021. Public domain image.
September: Jno.skinner, 2021. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
October: NOAA, 2004. Public domain image.
November: USAF, 2021. Public domain image.
December: Stuart Ray, 2021. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Postscript: R. deValmont, 2021.
