The strange language of this year

‘Forget coronavirus,’ said my husband, ‘the word of the year is strange.’ The strange thing is he’s right.

This wasn’t determined by online polls or fixed by dictionaries. It emerged spontaneously and distinctly when the lockdowns got going. About lockdown I am still not quite happy. The word seems a little extreme for the episodes so far. But friends kept mentioning these strange times.

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Ross Clark

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The word fitted in more than one sense. When politicians’ repetition of unprecedented had become tiresome, strange still applied in the sense of ‘unfamiliar; not known or experienced before’. It also described the feeling of life as ‘abnormal’. Both meanings have been present in English since Chaucer’s time.

The power of strange is not explained by its etymology. It derives, via Old French, from the Latin extraneus, ‘external, foreign’. But that does not supply its connotations.