Hawks
Haggard
WORDS · LANGUAGE · ETYMOLOGY
WORD OF THE YEAR 2017: AGATHISM 35%
the belief that all things eventually get better, though the means of getting there may not be easy
We don’t know what the future holds, but after what was largely considered an annus horribilis in 2016, it seems there could be light at the end of the tunnel as we head into 2018. Which makes agathism a nice choice for Word of the Year.
Agathism derives from agathos, a Greek word meaning ‘good’ or ‘noble.’ It dates back to the early 1800s in English, when George Miller, a fellow of the Royal Irish Academy and a lecturer in modern history at Dublin University, gave an address in which he spoke of a colleague who considered himself “not an optimist, but an agathist,” as he believed “everything tended to good, but did not think himself competent to determine what was absolutely the best.” From Dr Miller’s address in 1816, the word fell into occasional use in philosophical discussions in the nineteenth century, before largely falling out of use in the mid 1900s.
The rest of the voting this year was fairly evenly split between our other four finalists, but agathism comfortably took just over a third of the votes to be this year’s winner.
THE SHORTLIST
abydocomist 24%
(n.) a teller of blatant falsehoods; a liar who boasts of their lies
connivency 16%
(n.) the act of intentionally overlooking or ignoring something objectionable, and by doing so giving it your tacit approval
Adullamite 15%
(n.) someone frustrated or aggrieved with the current political environment
Diomedean 11%
(adj.) describing a deal or exchange that vastly benefits only one side
According to the Old Testament, it was to a cave on the outskirts of Adullam in Canaan that the future king David fled when he discovered Saul was plotting to have him killed. There, David was joined scores of Saul’s disgruntled subjects, and together this motley band of ‘Adullamites’ spent the remainder of their exile bemoaning Saul’s regime and plotting to oust him from power.
Now skip forward to the mid 1860s, when a dissenting band of anti-reform Liberals in the British parliament went against their own party’s policy (of extending the right to vote to all working men) and began plotting with the opposition Conservatives to derail their own government’s plans. Having seemingly ‘exiled’ themselves from their party, these renegade parliamentarians were labelled “Adullamites” by Liberal MP John Bright in 1865, and the word has remained a byword for anyone disgruntled or dismayed with the current state of politics ever since.
Another shortlisted word connected to the ancient world this year is abydocomist, the roots of which lie in the town of Abydos on the banks of the Hellespont (in modern-day Turkey.) Its inhabitants, according to one nineteenth century encyclopaedia at least, were “given much to detraction” and “addicted to calumny.” It’s this reputation that lies at the root of abydocomist—a word defined by the English lexicographer Nathan Bailey in 1751 as a term for “sycophants who boast of their falsehood.”