Rant #2,781: Shot Gun

Words are my tools to get across the various points I make in this Blog.
 
And since I have been doing this professionally for decades as a writer, I guess you can call me a “wordsmith” at this point in time, because my use of words has put food on my family’s table for many, many years.
 
That is why when I heard the latest news about “the word of the year” as chosen by Merriam-Webster, I really had to sit up and pay attention.
 
The word of the year, as chosen by this venerable publisher of paper and online dictionaries, is “vaccination,” and no, the classic—and actual—definition of this word has little or nothing to do with the current definition of the word as defined by this publisher … naturally, because it does not fit into the current narrative of what vaccines do, or directly, what the coronavirus vaccine does as opposed to what a real vaccine really does.
 
Now, this is not going to be a political article on the positives and negatives associated with the shots, so don’t turn away just yet.
 
I am as sick of the debate as you are, and I don’t want to talk about it politically right now … or at least on that particular political side of it.
 
But I guess there is going to be some politics involved in this discussion, and that is only because Merriam-Webster has fed into the media’s obsession with the shots not by its choice of the word as “the word of the year,” but by tweaking the definition to fit the current narrative of what a "vaccine" is.
 
So if you are looking for the real, true and actual definition of the word “vaccine,” don’t buy any new dictionaries put out by the company, nor buy into their current definition.
 
Let me explain …
 
With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has pretty much changed the definition of the word to not only reflect the status of the coronavirus vaccine, but to garner the publisher some extra press coverage.
 
Earlier in 2021, with the “vaccine” being made available to adults of just about all ages, Merriam-Webster added to its online entry for “vaccine” to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech PFE and Moderna MRNA.
 
And by doing so, it pretty much allowed people to misuse the word. Including every politician and supposed infectious disease “expert” who came down the pike.
 
In the “old days,” vaccines were considered and defined pretty much as shots that helped to protect people from getting whatever diseases they were directed to, including measles, polio, and other such potentially deadly or at least disfiguring diseases.
 
Now, even though the current coronavirus shots are nothing but mitigaters—inoculations that potentially lessen the symptoms of a disease or virus or affliction—they are considered to be “vaccines:--on the same level as the true measles and polio vaccines—by Merriam-Webster.
 
So if you need a definition of what the word "vaccine” means, you are getting an incorrect, or at least tweaked for the times, definition, which even makes my very benign allergy shots into “vaccinations.”
 
How ridiculous it is when a venerable institution like Merriam-Webster bows down to such drivel, which they may not realize makes them an unreliable source for a true definition of the word.
 
“This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press.
 
“It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is this remarkable speed with which the vaccines were developed. But there’s also the debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation. It’s one word that carries these two huge stories,” he said. “The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects,”.
 
Boy, what nonsensical mumbo jumbo Sokolowski fed us with these quotes that he gave to AP. I could swear I was listening to our elected officials when I read this quote.
 
According to AP, Merriam-Webster reported that lookups for the word “vaccine” increased 601 percent over 2020, when the first U.S. shot was administered in New York in December to that PC-chosen nurse on Long Island after quick development, which took place after another woman actually took the first such shots in England.
 
And for the record, Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2020 was “pandemic.” So I guess it was a natural that “vaccine” would follow—but to tweak its meaning to fit its current, incorrect use?
 
Bah humbug!
 
Anyway, do you think that Merriam-Webster is the only such venerable wordsmith publisher to be obsessed with the word, so much so that they changed its meaning?
 
Well, their selection follows the choice of the slangy “vax” as “the word of the year” by the Oxford English Dictionary.
 
I did not even know that “vax” was a real word, but heck, every dictionary that I know includes the words “ain’t” in its definitions, as well as various curse words, so “vax” it is.
 
I would assume that next year, “the word of the year” will be “vaxxed,” as in the necklace that New York Governor Kathy “The Yokel” Hochul wears around her neck as if it was a religious symbol.
 
I didn’t know that that was a word either, but heck, there are a lot of words that I don’t know of … but believe me, I will continue to use the word “vaccination” in its “old” context, and again, without getting political, those shots we are getting—however good or bad you think they are—are not true vaccinations, no matter how you dice and slice it.