The Words of the Week - Jan. 31

‘Roster’

Lookups for roster were high early in the week, possibly in relation to excitement over the upcoming Super Bowl.

Seven former FCS players are listed on the active roster ahead of Super Bowl LIX, while six others are on the practice squad or injured reserve. The Kansas City Chiefs will face the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
— Zachary McKinnell, Sports Illustrated, 26 Jan. 2025

Roster can refer to a roll or list of personnel, such a list giving the order in which a duty is to be performed (as in “a duty roster”), or the persons listed on a roster. It can also refer to an itemized list. In a Super Bowl-sized coincidence, roster comes from the Dutch word rooster, meaning, literally, “gridiron” (the cooking grate, however, not the football field).

‘Hubris’

Hubris has been a top lookup for several weeks, including this one. It is difficult to pinpoint a particular instance of usage driving curiosity about the word, as it is frequently employed in a variety of contexts, from entertainment to politics.

“This brilliantly conceived series is exquisitely cast and written, capturing the fanatical love, dedication, pressure and, yes, the hubris that defines our industry. It’s hilariously spot-on, bringing to life the stories we’ve all heard or witnessed firsthand.”
— Claudette Godfrey, quoted in The Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan. 2025

Given Trump’s monarchical pretensions, he’d undoubtedly like us all to think he is unbound by limits and that resistance is futile. That is not the case, however, and we should not mistake Trump's bombastic return and far-reaching early initiatives for unstoppable momentum. On the contrary, we are more likely to look back on this period as the highwater mark of Trumpian hubris. Making lavish promises is easy; delivering positive results is a whole lot harder.
— Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 27 Jan. 2025

We define hubris as “exaggerated pride or self-confidence.” English got the term for that particular brand of cockiness from the ancient Greeks, who considered hubris a dangerous character flaw capable of provoking the wrath of the gods. In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of their mortality.

‘Liberation’ & ‘Holocaust’

January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and every year sees spikes in lookups for both Holocaust and liberation. The day is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops is being marked on Monday at the site of the former death camp, a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend. Among those who traveled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was 6 when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will be the last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz and she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism. … In all, the Nazis regime murdered 6 million Jews from all over Europe, annihilating two-thirds of Europe's Jews and one-third of all Jews worldwide. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
— Vanessa Gera, The Associated Press, 27 Jan. 2025

Liberation, in this context, means “the act or process of freeing someone or something from another’s control”; the word comes from the Latin liber, meaning “free.” Holocaust has a number of meanings, but in this case refers to “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II” (in this context the word is capitalized and usually preceded by the).

‘Conspiracy theorist’

Lookups for conspiracy theorist spiked on Wednesday morning during the Senate confirmation hearing of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who had been described as such in the days leading up to hearing. The term also came up during the hearing itself.

Trump’s nominee to head HHS, vaccine critic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy, is slated for a confirmation hearing before the US Senate on Wednesday.
— Jessica Glenza, The Guardian (London, England), 28 Jan. 2025

He is obviously good at punting the questions and came prepared to do so. When he was asked if he was a conspiracy theorist, for example, he just said no and claimed that he was called a conspiracy theorist for saying Covid vaccines don’t prevent transmission. But that’s not the real reason. For example, he has falsely claimed that the H.P.V. vaccine increases rates of cancer—and he even stands to potentially benefit from a lawsuit against that vaccine.
— Zeynep Tufekci, The New York Times, 30 Jan. 2025

We define conspiracy theorist as “a person who proposes or believes in a conspiracy theory,” and conspiracy theory as both “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators” and “a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public.”

‘Rescind’

The verb rescind also had more lookups than usual on Wednesday, likely in connection to a letter from the federal Office of Management and Budget rescinding its previous memo freezing all federal financial assistance programs.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rescinded a memo Wednesday that had ordered a “temporary pause” on federal funding and unleashed major confusion across the country.
— Zachary Basu, Axios, 29 Jan. 2025

We define several senses of rescind, among them “to take away or remove,” “to take back or cancel,” and “to make void by action of the enacting authority or a superior authority,” in other words, “to repeal.” Rescind and the lesser-known words exscind and prescind all come from the Latin verb scindere, which means “to cut” or “to split.”

‘Earthquake’

Earthquake jumped in lookups following a small temblor that rattled eastern New England on Monday.

An earthquake felt in Boston, Massachusetts today was centered off York Harbor, Maine according to the United States Geological Survey. It was also felt in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, a USGS map showed.
— Neal Riley, WBZ News (CBS Boston), 27 Jan. 2025

An earthquake is a shaking or trembling of the earth that is volcanic or tectonic in origin. The word earthquake has been used in English since at least the 1300s.

Word Worth Knowing: ‘Sweven’

Sweven is a noun that means “dream” or “vision,” and comes from the Old English word swefn. We label this word archaic, meaning it was relatively common in earlier times but is infrequently used in present-day English. However, we’re not aware of any laws prohibiting the return of archaic words to everyday speech, so if you want to help sweven’s cause, you might start by asking your friends and family tomorrow morning if they want to hear about your sweven and proceed from there.

I fell a sleepe, and therewith even / Me mette so inly such a sweven, / So wonderful, that never yet / I trowe no man had the wit / To cone well my sweven rede.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1845