The Words of the Week - Feb. 10

’EGOT’

EGOT saw a large increase in lookups, after Viola Davis won a Grammy award last weekend.

Last night at the 65th annual Grammy Awards, Viola Davis joined the exclusive EGOT club, taking home the Grammy for best audiobook, narration, and storytelling recording for her memoir, Finding Me.
— Chris Murphy, Vanity Fair 6 Feb. 2023

EGOT is an acronym, with the meaning “the accomplishment of winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award in one's lifetime.” The word has been in use since 1984; Davis is only the 18th person to have achieved EGOT status.

’Infrastructure’

President Biden delivered the annual State of the Union speech last week; one of the words that trended in lookups as a result was infrastructure.

We used to be #1 in the world in infrastructure, then we fell to #13th. Now we’re coming back because we came together to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the largest investment in infrastructure since President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System.
— Remarks of President Joe Biden – State of the Union Address as Prepared for Delivery, whitehouse.gov., 7 Feb. 2023

We define this sense of infrastructure as “the system of public works of a country, state, or region,” and also as “the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity.” This word has spiked in lookups other times in Biden’s presidency, most notably in April of 2021, when he announced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal that included funds for things that some people thought were not actually infrastructural (such as broadband internet, clean energy, and elder care). It is perhaps worth noting that infrastructure has additional meanings (such as “the underlying foundation or basic framework, as of a system or organization”), some of which are not restricted to physical objects.

’Catcall’

Another word that increased in lookups as a result of Biden’s speech was catcall, which was used in numerous newspapers in the days following.

The speech's most publicized moment was the Republican catcalls when Mr. Biden said the party wants to cut payments for Social Security and Medicare.
— Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 9 Feb. 2023

President Biden was well into his State of the Union address when he noted that 25 percent of the nation's debt had accumulated under former president Donald Trump, a remark that immediately elicited angry catcalls from Republicans in the chamber. "They're the facts - check it out," Biden said, as the grumbling swelled into a cacophony. "Check it out!”
— Matt Viser & Michael Scherer, The Washington Post, 9 Feb. 2023

The sense of catcall that many readers are likely most familiar with is “a loud, sexually suggestive call or comment directed at someone publicly (as on the street)”; this is not the sense intended by the above newspapers. Catcall has another sense, which is “a loud or raucous cry made especially to express disapproval (as at a sports event).” This ‘expressing disapproval’ sense is the older of the two, and has been in use since the late 17th century.

’Epicenter’

Epicenter was in the news, after a large earthquake in Turkey led to thousands of deaths.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6, with its epicenter in Gaziantep, Turkey, has become one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century.
— The New York Times, 7 Feb. 2023

When used in seismology (the science of earthquakes), the epicenter refers to the part of the earth's surface directly above the focus of an earthquake (the epi- prefix means “over”). The word for the spot that is the actual focus of the earthquake, which occurs underground, is hypocenter. In recent years epicenter has taken on an extended meaning, unrelated to earthquakes, which is “a point, area, person, or thing that is most important or pivotal in relation to an indicated activity, interest, or condition.”

’Felony’

Felony attracted more attention than it usually does, following reports that schoolteachers in Florida might be charged with one, if they were found to have shared reading material considered objectionable by certain state agencies.

Michael Barber, communications director of Manatee County schools, told ABC News on Friday that teachers could be charged with a third-degree felony if they share a book that's considered pornographic or obscene under Florida law. But many teachers misinterpret the law as meaning they could be indicted for simply sharing any unvetted material, he said.
— Tesfaye Negussie & Rahma Ahmed, ABC News, 6 Feb. 2023

We define felony as “a crime that has a greater punishment imposed by statute than that imposed on a misdemeanor,” and note that it is specifically a federal crime for which the punishment may be death or imprisonment for more than a year. In U.S. law misdemeanors, in contrast, are often defined as offenses punishable only by fines or by short terms of imprisonment in local jails. Originally, in English law, a felony was a crime for which the perpetrator would suffer forfeiture of all real and personal property as well as whatever sentence was imposed. Under U.S. law, there is no forfeiture of all of the felon’s property, and it is not part of the definition. For certain crimes, however, such as some kinds of racketeering, specific property is subject to forfeiture.

Words Worth Knowing: ‘Satisfice’

Our word worth knowing this week is satisfice, defined as “to pursue the minimum satisfactory condition or outcome.”

People satisfice. They accept “good enough” except where there are unavoidable pressures to go further.
— Adam Shostack, Fast, Cheap and Good: Lightweight Methods Are Undervalued (from arXiv.org), 10 Dec. 2022