In the 2022 war of words, doom and gloom have been declared the victor. Collins Dictionary chose “permacrisis” as word of the year (WOTY) for its capacity to encapsulate “quite succinctly” the dire year that is… still going.
So what does it mean? According to Collins, the term (a noun) describes “an extended period of instability and insecurity”. Macquarie University linguistics professor Annabelle Lukin said the sentiment was bang on but she’s stumped by the word itself.
“Generally, words need a certain amount of momentum for a dictionary to make space for them,” Lukin told Crikey. “But this seems to be a reverse process where the dictionary seeds it and inches it into popular discourse.”
“Fake news”, Collins’ 2017 WOTY, is an example of the former; likewise “mansplain”, Macquarie Dictionary’s 2014 WOTY. Both were out in public discourse (not necessarily for noble reasons); the dictionaries brought them into the (page) fold.
So was “permacrisis” dubbed WOTY because it crossed a high-frequency threshold, or is Collins playing a promotional game, hoping to encourage uptake of its word of choice? Crikey put the question to Collins but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Given much of our bleak 2022 existence exists online, it’s easy to gauge the size and scope of a word based on its digital footprint. Data from News on the Web — a news corpus in the order of 16 billion words from 20 countries that dates back to 2010 — finds very few examples of “permacrisis”, with most relating to the Collins announcement.
It’s a similar game on the Google Books corpus (although this only counts appearances of the word up to 2019).
“Permacrisis” made its written debut in the 1970s in apparent relation to a paper on the French social security system: “From Permacrisis to Real Crisis in French Social Security”. Could this be a great revival of the word? The ’70s were certainly defined by an economic unravelling — the oil crisis, stagflation, etc — so Collins could be on the money.
For the remainder of the 20th century, “permacrisis” lay low before piquing the interest of authors at the end of 2019. It could have had a Google Books renaissance in the three years following, but Lukin is doubtful: “It clearly hasn’t sparked the collective imagination. Otherwise it’d show up in the news.”
Is there more to the word than meets the eye?
“Permacrisis” is a portmanteau, which according to the online Oxford English Dictionary (for the sake of diversity) means “a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others”. It’s also a large travelling bag, but let’s leave that behind.
“Perma” comes from “permanent” and “crisis” from… “crisis”.
In 2012, the portmanteau “omnishambles” was crowned WOTY by the OED. That was around the time of the fallout from the GFC and the European crisis.
Retired associate professor of linguistics and occasional Crikey columnist Tim Moore said it gives a sense of how we’ve travelled over the past decade: “from shambolic to things being rather crisis-ridden”.
“I think it’s quite a neat summary of this generally apocalyptic view we have of things,” he added.
In recent times, the winning words have been increasingly pessimistic. In 2018, OED chose “toxic” and in 2019 landed on “climate emergency”. In 2020, Macquarie had “doomscrolling”, while Collins had “lockdown”.
The shift from words rooted in a specific crisis to one that encompasses collective crises is apt, said Moore, but he’s concerned the dictionary may have reached the end of the line: “What comes after permacrisis as a notion? Armageddon?”
University of Oxford professor of English language and literature Simon Horobin said herein lies the good news (pending you come at it as a “classicist”): “Crisis is technically a specific moment at which an important change takes place, either for better or for worse, and so can’t really be permanent.”
From a classicist perspective, the “permacrisis” doesn’t hold — but can it catch? Moore is not convinced about colloquial uptake.
“It is just hard to imagine it being readily used in any plausible social context,” he said. “‘How was your trip?’ ‘All good apart from the bloody permacrisis’.”
Catchy.
Can you sum up 2022 in a single word? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
