Gimme Shelter: What’s happened to the English language?

Another year, another report on the rapidly crumbling edifice of the English language tilting unsteadily in a widening pile of gibberish.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that the most adaptable, vibrant language in the world had a very good 2022.

Here at Gimme Shelter, after evaluating extensive research, including focus groups and scientifically conducted surveys, we concluded that the language is a step closer to the grave due to “verbification,” or turning nouns into verbs.

As writer Chi Luu has observed: “Consider popular internet memes like ‘Let me librarian that for you’ and ‘Do you even science, bro?’ in which ‘librarian’ and ‘science’ are nouns weirdly disguised as verbs. Other examples of this are ‘words’ such as dialoguing, actioning, efforting, or transiting.”

Searching for sanity (ha!) we stopped to consult with the diligent word nerds at Merriam-Webster Dictionary, who greeted us pleasantly, if a smidgen distracted. You would be preoccupied (bananas?) as well after spending day and night teasing out the roots of words back to their Indo-Sumerian births and getting lost in the stacks.

Fingernails chewed to the quick, sporting eccentric haircuts, the Merriam-Webster-ites appear as if they had dressed in the dark from clothes found on the floor. Except for a couple of men who look like lumberjacks long abandoned in a wilderness camp. (Come to think of it, we know many writers and journalists who fit that description.)

These word-maddened geeks have named a splendid Word of the Year — “gaslighting.” As the dictionary stated at its annual red carpet gala (no): “In this age of misinformation — of ‘fake news,’ conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes — gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time. A driver of disorientation and mistrust, gaslighting is ‘the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.’ 2022 saw a 1,740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year.”

Scary, but true.

Some will remember that the origin of the word comes from the Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer classic, “Gaslight,” where a husband attempts to convince his wife that she’s insane. Speaking of remembering, the luminous Ms. Bergman was also a great wit, noting that the secret to a happy life is a bad memory.

This just in: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the language, describing an affliction of the lungs. We offer it here so you can causally drop it into a conversation with someone you want to impress (or leave you alone). How to pronounce it? Please. Can you do nothing for yourselves?

We’ll take a break now for some practical knowledge on how to use English correctly. Called to the stage is our old friend, the language samurai David Lozell Martin — simonandschuster.com/authors/David-Lozell-Martin/1913538 — a journalist, editor and best-selling author of a dozen novels and one of the best modern American memoirs, “Losing Everything.” He is also always impeccably groomed and tailored.

Mr. Martin, the floor is yours.

“When you’ve spent your life editing, one question you get is, ‘Most people don’t know these language rules so who cares if you get the rules right or wrong?’ First, following the rules of language will make you a better writer, but let’s analyze this question. If you’re counting on the people reading your writing being too dumb to know the proper use of language, your strategy is based on surrounding yourself with stupid people for the rest of your life. That’s not a recipe for success. Instead, you could assume that some in your audience (maybe a future boss or in-law) will know how language should be used and that you will impress them with your careful, correct writing.

“The Latin abbreviation i.e. stands for id est, which means in other words. The abbreviation e.g. stands for exempli gratia, which means for example. Use i.e. when you’re going to explain, amplify, or clarify something. Use e.g. when you want to give an example.

“My friend is crazy for horror movies (i.e., she puts on horror movie festivals and collects horror costumes). My friend’s favorite horror movies are the old ones (e.g., ‘Psycho’).

“But English also works. My friend is crazy for horror movies (in other words, she puts on horror movie festivals and collects horror costumes). My friend’s favorite horror movies are the old ones (‘Psycho,’ for example).

“English has many evil twins — words similar in spelling or pronunciation but which have wickedly different meanings: affect-effect, principal-principle, lay-lie, and so on. Nothing to do but look up the differences and memorize them. But English also has evil triples and assure-ensure-insure is one trio that people get wrong all the time.

“Assure means to comfort; ensure means to guarantee; insure means to take out insurance. Think of a teenager who wants to guarantee (ensure) he can get a car and wants to comfort his parents (assure them) he will act responsibly, so he takes out an insurance policy (insures) on his new car:

“To ensure he could get a car and assure his parents of his responsibility, the teenager insured the car.”

Again, Mr. Martin, we are in your debt.

Returning to the precincts of a dictionary, we’ll note that if the Merriam-Webster commune was sober and serious in their Word of the Year, their British counterparts at the Oxford English dictionary — re-branded (did we just say that?) under the brolly of “Oxford Languages” — have gone barmy with their choice as the defining word for 2022.

Ready? “Goblin mode,” which the New York Times described as “a slang term referring to a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”

We can hear cut-glass accents all over the Home Counties expressing outrage. (Mildly, of course.)

One explanation for the chosen word is that the Oxford elves and gnomes chopped up the wrong mushrooms for the vegan lunch, which led to general hilarity and not a few hospitalizations.

Still, we salute them for not going with another popular choice, “metaverse.” Rule of thumb for letters as well as life: If forced to choose, take ludicrous over sinister.