The Words of the Week - September 6

‘Labor’

Labor Day was celebrated this past Monday in the U.S. and Canada, leading to a rise in lookups for both Labor Day and labor.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Day is “an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America's strength, prosperity, and well-being.” Those include ending widespread child labor and instituting a standard 40-hour work week.
— Scott Cousins, The Edwardsville (Illinois) Intelligencer, 4 Sept. 2024

In the U.S. and Canada, Labor Day is a national holiday held on the first Monday of September; many other countries celebrate it on May 1st. Although there are records of Labor Day being celebrated in New York City as far back as 1882 the holiday was not officially sanctioned by Congress until 1894. There are many related senses of the noun labor in our dictionary, among them “an economic group comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages,” “the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits,” and “human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy.”

‘Feedback’

Lookups for feedback saw a bump after strange noises reported by astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore aboard the International Space Station were attributed to feedback from a speaker.

A mysterious sound heard emanating from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft has been identified as feedback from a speaker, NASA said in a statement Monday assuring the capsule’s autonomous flight back to Earth is still slated to depart the International Space Station as early as Friday. “The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner,” NASA said, adding that it’s “common” to experience noise and feedback. The statement said the “pulsing sound” has stopped.
— Christopher Cann, USA Today, 3 Sept. 2024

We define the relevant sense of feedback as “a rumbling, whining, or whistling sound resulting from an amplified or broadcast signal (such as music or speech) that has been returned as input and retransmitted.” Click here to get looped in on more info about this word.

‘Disinformation’

Disinformation was looked up more often than usual this week, following Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement on Wednesday of efforts to combat interference in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The actions include sanctions, indictments and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than two years ago. … American officials have been stepping up their warnings about Russian election influence efforts. American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the November contest, seeing him as more skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine.
— Julian E. Barnes, et al, The New York Times, 4 Sept. 2024

Disinformation refers to false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. Disinformation does not much look like a word of Russian origin, but it comes from the Russian dezinformatsiya (“misinformation”). Although the word may be found in occasional use as far back as the 1930s, it began to see greatly increased use during the Cold War, in the 1950s.

‘Indictment’

Indictment and indict also saw higher-than-usual lookups this week following news out of the U.S. Justice Department.

The U.S. government has charged a Russian-born U.S. citizen and former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with working for a sanctioned Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds. Indictments announced Thursday by the Department of Justice allege that Dimitri Simes and his wife received over $1 million dollars and a personal car and driver in exchange for work they did for Russia’s Channel One since June 2022. The network was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
— Eric Tucker and David Klepper, The Associated Press, 5 Sept. 2024

Our legal definition of indict is “to charge with a crime by the finding or presentment of a grand jury in due form of law.” The word may also be used in a general sense, with the meaning of “to charge with a fault or offense; to criticize or accuse.” Our legal definition of indictment is “a formal written statement framed by a prosecuting authority and found by a grand jury that charges a person or persons with an offense.”

Word Worth Knowing: ‘Lucubration’

Lucubration is a fancy word for the labors of the mind. It refers to intensive study, and is also used, usually used in the plural, to refer to the products of such study:

“The White Cat and the Monk” [by Jo Ellen Bogart] retells the ninth-century Old Irish poem “Pangur Ban”—a monk’s simple, sage meditation on the parallels between his scholarly lucubrations and his feline companion’s playful hunts. In the tiny candlelit home they share, each relishes the day’s rewards, delighting in but not competing with the other’s.
— Maria Popova, The New York Times, 10 Apr. 2016

The verb elucubrate means “to work out or express by studious effort.” Both words evoke the deep-into-the-night ruminations of a scholar, and so it’s appropriate that the Latin verb lucubrare literally means “to work by lamplight.” Originally the word stressed nocturnal study, but now one can elucubrate any hour of the livelong day.