Grant reviews notable words and phrases from 2017. One is path of totality, meaning the part of the earth completely covered in shadow when the moon blocks the sun. Another is milkshake duck, which arose from a tweet by Australian cartoonist Ben Ward. Milkshake duck encapsulates the idea that in the age of social media, people can become suddenly famous and admired, only to suffer a swift fall when unsavory information about them swiftly comes to light. Ward’s popular comic strip is called “One Giant Hand.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “2017 Words of the Year”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
Every year about this time, I put together my words of the year.
Oh, yes. I can’t wait.
So I’ve got a couple for you today.
They kind of represent 2017, but I’ve done something different this year.
I decided to ignore the political words.
Thank you.
Well, I feel like they’re getting all the press and attention they need in other quarters.
So I picked two out that I think still represent 2017, but they’re not politically related.
Great.
The first of these, you probably remember, Path of Totality.
Oh, my gosh.
How could I forget?
So not only does it sound like an Ursula Le Guin novel, something really exciting, but it also sounds mysterious, like celestial bodies are controlling you, right?
Path of Totality.
But what it means is the part of the Earth that was completely covered in shadow when the moon blocked the sun in August, and we had this nice eclipse.
Yeah.
So the Path of Totality.
Nice memory.
Right?
It was a good time.
People came together.
All these science.
Everybody turned into a science nerd.
We all showed up and enjoyed this rare event together and learned a little about the solar system that we live in.
The other one is stranger, a little more esoteric.
It all stems from a tweet by a guy named Ben Ward.
He’s an Australian who has the handle pixelated boat.
Now, in 2016, he tweeted, “The whole Internet loves milkshake duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes. Five seconds later, we regret to inform you that the duck is racist.”
So from that single tweet in 2016, milkshake duck became a thing.
And what it means is it’s when you learn of somebody and they’re awesome and they’re great and good and you love the things they do.
But just a little bit later, you learn that there’s something bad about them.
Right. That there’s there are allegations or untruths or sordid details.
So besides perfectly representing so much of what happened in 2017, were these people who we thought were good people.
It turned out that they had these terrible histories that had been hidden from us.
But it also kind of represents, milkshake duck represents the speed at which we now find things out.
The speed of social media, the speed at which someone can rise and become a phenomenon, but the speed at which they can also fall.
Yeah, it gives you whiplash, doesn’t it?
It gives you whiplash, yeah.
So that’s milkshake duck and pathototality.
Those are my two words of the year for 2017.
By the way, the guy who came up with the term milkshake duck, his name is Ben Ward.
He has a cool comic at OneGiantHand.com.
So what are the Velcro words and phrases in your life, the ones that you’ve come across this year and just can’t seem to shake?
Call us about them, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
