Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. 5

’Immunize’ & ‘Vaccinate’

Immunize and vaccinate were much discussed last week, after an athlete was found to have embraced semantic ambiguity in answering the question of whether he had been vaccinated.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss the team's upcoming game against the Kansas City Chiefs, according to NFL Network's Tom Pelissero. NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport said on Wednesday that Rodgers was not vaccinated. In August the star quarterback dodged a question about vaccines by saying he was “immunized.”
— Kelly McLaughlin & Tyler Lauletta, Yahoo! News, 3 Nov. 2021

Is there a substantive difference between immunize and vaccinate? As is the case with so many such questions in English the answer is a resounding ‘maybe?’ One notable difference is that we offer a shorter definition for one of these words than we do for the other: vaccinate is defined as “to administer a vaccine to usually by injection,” while immunize is “to make (someone or something) immune to something : to provide with protection against or immunity from something; specifically : to make (a living organism) immune or resistant to a disease or pathogenic agent especially by inoculation : to create immunity in (as with a vaccine).” Many people do treat these words with a degree of synonymy. In this case the meaning that was intended by the man who throws the ball is sufficiently unclear from textual evidence for us to render judgment; render your own judgment.

’Dog whistle’

Dog whistle found itself mentioned in many news stories last week, after Democrat Terry McAuliffe used the word in reference to actions taken by the Republican he was running against (and subsequently defeated by), Glenn Youngkin.

With Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully turning the Virginia gubernatorial campaign into a referendum on whether White students are being cruelly forced to think about racism, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is charging that Youngkin is deploying that most underhanded of rhetorical techniques, the “dog whistle.”
— Paul Waldman, The Washington Post, 1 Nov. 2021

Dog whistle has been in use for centuries, initially employed with a quite literal meaning: “a whistle to call or direct a dog.” These whistles were often designed to sound at a frequency inaudible to the human ear, a quality that gave rise to the word’s secondary meaning: “an expression or statement that has a secondary meaning intended to be understood only by a particular group of people.”

Typically found in political contexts, this figurative use of dog whistle is often encountered before another noun, such as tactics, policies, or rhetoric. While we have evidence of writers describing coded political messages as being “like a modern dog whistle” as far back as the 1940s, the use of the term as a metaphor, rather than as a simile, dates from the 1990s.

’Flout’ & ‘Flaunt’

As government (at the state and federal level), businesses, and schools continue to issue directives and regulations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is perhaps useful to remind everyone of the difference between flout and flaunt. Flout is most often used with the meaning of “to treat with contemptuous disregard,” as seen in the following examples.

'We have to survive': some businesses flout Moscow COVID-19 lockdown
— (headline) Reuters, 29 Oct. 2021

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene fined for flouting COVID mask rules in Congress
— (headline) The Seattle Times, 26 Oct. 2021

Khloé was diagnosed with COVID-19 for the first time in 2020, as was her sister Kim Kardashian. The family was widely criticized for often blatantly flouting COVID safety protocols during the earlier part of the pandemic, prior to the global vaccine rollout.
— Emily Mae Czachor, Buzzfeed, 3 Nov. 2021

Flaunt is typically used in the sense of “to display ostentatiously or impudently.” We do provide a definition for flaunt which is synonymous with flout: “to treat contemptuously.” We offer this definition due to the fact that flaunt has been widely used in this manner for many decades. And if recent coverage of Covid-19 regulations is any indication this sense will not disappear anytime soon (but you should know that many people consider this use to be a vile error).

We firmly believe that the protestors who crashed the Oct. 27 Portland Public Schools board meeting have the right to share their views about vaccines and masks in public schools. But they don't have the right to flaunt the laws requiring masks in schools.
— Editorial Board, The Outlook (Portland, OR), 2 Nov. 2021

’Luciferase’

Luciferase spiked in lookups this week, for the first time ever, after a news correspondent claimed in a (now-deleted) tweet that this substance was involved in government surveillance.

The White House correspondent for right-wing news outlet Newsmax has been suspended from Twitter for a week, under the social media platform’s rules about spreading Covid misinformation. Emerald Robinson posted a tweet on Monday that falsely claimed Covid vaccines “contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked”.
— Helen Elfer, The Independent (London, Eng.), 3 Nov. 2021

We realize this may be confusing for some people, and will try to clear up the matter as best we can. Luciferase is defined as “an enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of luciferin," and luciferin is “any of various organic substances in luminescent organisms (such as fireflies) that upon oxidation produce a virtually heatless light.” Both these words come from the Latin lucifer, a word which means “light-bearing.”

Our Antedating of the Week

Our antedating of the week is another word that began in the canine realm and then moved to the figurative: dog tag. We define this as “an identification tag (as for military personnel or pets),” and previously had an earliest known use of 1882. Recent findings show that dog tags have been around since at least 1859.

His effort was made in support of an amendment to the Dog tag ordinance, which he himself offered, to the effect that all owners of “noxious and furious dogs,” permitting them to run at large, should be subject to prosecution.
— Daily National Democrat (Marysville, CA), 9 Feb. 1859