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WORD OF THE YEAR 2020: RESPAIR

(n.) the opposite of despair: renewed hope, a slow recovery from a period of anguish or hopelessness

 

We did get two surprise Taylor Swift albums out of 2020, but other than that it was an undeniably tough twelve months. But with a change in the White House and a promising Covid-19 vaccine rollout both on their way, just under a third of you wanted to look ahead a little more positively: the 2020 Haggard Hawks Word of the Year is respair—a word for renewed hope, or a recovery from a period of anguish or hopelessness.

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It might be 2020, but this is a word with a long heritage as its earliest (and sole) written record comes from a work by Andrew of Wyntoun, a Scottish poet who flourished in the late fourteenth century. Looking hopefully towards the future, it seems, is nothing new. 

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During the voting, respair was tied for several days with our eventual runner-up, aporia—a word for a confusing or perplexing situation, or in rhetoric, a string of bemused questions that helps you get your thoughts in order. In the end, there were less than 40 votes separating the top two here, bringing the closest ever contest to a suitably dramatic end.​

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“This book will delight logophiles everywhere, and create many new ones.”
JOHN BANVILLE

THE SHORTLIST

aporia 27%

(n.) a confusing or perplexing situation; the state of being lost for words
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wheady-mile 25%

(n.) the final stretch of an exhausting journey
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casus omissus 12%

(n.) an event or situation without parallel; a new experience, uncharted territory
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eustress 6%

(n.) a stressful situation that is responded to positively; ultimately beneficial stress​
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The unprecedented events of 2020 coloured this year’s entire shortlist, which was made up of words tapping into the exhausting, unnerving and socially resetting aspects of the time. A perennial favourite on the Haggard Hawks social feeds, wheady-mile, ended up in bronze medal position with a quarter of the overall votes: wheady, or weady, means ‘tiresome’ or ‘arduous’, which makes a wheady-mile the final exhausting mile of a journey—typically, the one before your eventual destination. More generally, however, the term can be used to describe any journey that seems longer, tougher, or more wearisome than it truly is, which made it a very popular choice among this year’s runners-up.

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