Words of the Week - April 29

Is this a quag, a mire, or a quagmire?

’Quagmire’

Quagmire has been increasingly common in news stories this week, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine showed no signs of ending soon.

This time, while U.S. and other NATO forces stay away, they’re counting on the Ukrainians to ensure Russia cannot escape the quagmire into which Putin has foolishly sunk his forces—and his own reputation as a fearsome dictator.
— Donald Kirk, The Daily Beast, 26 Apr. 2022

We define quagmire is two ways: “soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot,” and “a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position.” It is often found in this figurative second sense, applied to countries that have invaded another country and found themselves in difficulty. In use since the late 16th century, the word was formed by combining quag (a word meaning “marsh, bog”) with mire, a word whose meanings include “wet spongy earth” and “a troublesome or intractable situation.”

’Kleptocrat’

Also trending in lookups this week was kleptocrat, after the U.S. Department of Justice issued what it referred to as a ‘Fact Sheet,’ concerned with the recovery of money from people meriting this descriptor.

The President’s proposals will give the United States and our international partners critical resources and tools to dismantle the criminal networks that enable sanctions evasion; to freeze, seize, and forfeit kleptocrat assets; and to transfer the proceeds of those assets to remediate the harms the people of Ukraine are enduring from Russia’s aggression.
— United States Department of Justice, Administration Legislative Proposals in Support of Kleptocracy Asset Recovery, 28 Apr. 2022

A kleptocrat is “a thievish politician,” or a member of a kleptocracy (“government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed”). The word takes its roots from the Greek kleptein (“to steal”) and kratos (“strength, power”). A kleptocrat differs from a kleptomaniac, as the latter often steals things compulsively, and without an economic motive, while the former has a very clear economic motive, which is to get more money.

’Tribute’

Tribute was featured prominently in numerous headlines last week, as Stephen Breyer took part in his final hearing as a justice of the Supreme Court.

'Deep appreciation': Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer receives emotional tribute at final argument
— (headline) USA Today, 27 Apr. 2022

The word has a variety of meanings, including “a payment by one ruler or nation to another in acknowledgment of submission or as the price of protection,” “an exorbitant charge levied by a person or group having the power of coercion,” and “something (such as material evidence or a formal attestation) that indicates the worth, virtue, or effectiveness of the one in question” (the sense most applicable to Breyer’s last day at work). Tribute may be traced to the Latin word tribus, a word that could mean "one third of the Roman people."

’Authenticate’ & ’Misinformation’

The news that Elon Musk was planning on buying Twitter caused a number of words to spike in lookups, including authenticate and misinformation.

As the public combs through Elon Musk's Twitter (TWTR) feed for clues on how the billionaire entrepreneur intends to run the social media platform he's buying for $44 billion, one mysterious line stands out: "authenticate all real humans.”
— Brian Fung, CNN, 28 Apr. 2022

How Congress Can Prevent Elon Musk from Turning Twitter Back Into an Unfettered Disinformation Machine
— (headline) The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2022

Authenticate may be defined as “to prove or serve to prove to be real, true, or genuine.” The word comes, unsurprisingly, from authentic (“real or genuine”), which itself may be traced to the Greek authentēs, meaning “perpetrator, master.”

Misinformation is defined as “incorrect or misleading information.” You may wish to distinguish between this word and the exceedingly similar disinformation, which we define as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.” Misinformation has been in used for over 400 years, with citations found from 1613. Disinformation, on the other hand, is considerably more recent, not appearing in print until the middle of the 20th century.

Words You Should Know: ‘Paracme’ & ‘Juvenescence’

John Quincy’s New Medicinal Dictionary of 1736 describes paracme as “According to Galen, that Part of Life where a Person is said to grow old, and which he reckons from 35 to 49, when he is said to be old.” Our Unabridged Dictionary of 1934 defined the word as “the state of decadence or decline in the phylogeny of a group of organisms, after the acme of development.”

If you are aptly described as having reached your paracme, it is quite possible that you find this word neither amusing nor helpful, in which case we would like to recommend to you juvenescence, defined as “the state of being youthful or of growing young.”