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WORD OF THE YEAR 2021: OVERMUSED 33%

(adj.) worn out from thinking too much

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It’s fair to say we probably all had a lot on our minds in 2021, which makes this superb seventeenth-century coinage the perfect choice for this year’s Haggard Hawks Word of the Year.

 

To overmuse is to overthink, or to contemplate too much—so if you’re feeling overmused, then you’re utterly exhausted from endlessly thinking, worrying, and mulling things over. And after yet another difficult twelve months, that’s probably a feeling many of us were familiar with in 2021. That being said, a quick shoutout here to the first runner-up this year, thulge, which led the pack right up until the day before voting closed.

Image by Tingey Injury Law Firm
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“This book will delight logophiles everywhere, and create many new ones.”
JOHN BANVILLE

THE SHORTLIST

thulge 26%

(v.) to tolerate something unpleasant
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pseudiater 18%

(n.) someone who feigns or questionably professes medical expertise
 

apanthropy 17%

(n.) a love or desire for solitude; a dislike of being around other people
 

channel fever 5%

(n.) an intense, restless homesickness, sparked or worsened by nearing the end of a long journey​
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After another fractious year of covid lockdowns, doomscrolling, and working from home, the 2021 shortlist was understandably made up of words relating to difficult times, difficult people, and a desire both for normality and space. Medical terminology continued to be common parlance in 2021, but in a world of antivaxxers, antimaskers, and antilockdowners, the nineteenth-century coinage pseudiater made an appropriate addition to our newfound collective lexicon of medicalese: “someone who pretends or wrongly believes themselves to have medical knowledge,” as one definition puts it—or, as a 1914 medical dictionary even more succinctly explained it, “a quack charlatan”. 

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