'Normal': The Word Of The Year (In A Year That Was Anything But)

It's been an unusual political year, to put it mildly, and you could write most of its story just by tracking its effects on the lexicon — the new words and new uses of old ones, some useful, some that we could do without. I'll come to some of these in a minute. But for my word of the year, I'll go with "normal" and its sister "normalize." That may seem perverse for a year like this one, but when people are talking a lot about normal it's a sign that we're living in extraordinary times. Start with "the new normal." Since the beginning of the century, that's how we've announced that events have forced us to accept new realities. In 2002 the new normal was long airport lines. In 2009 it was kids moving back in with their parents. Then came school lockdowns, soaring college debt and safe spaces. But when you search on the phrase now, the results are always political. For some it's an energized racist fringe . For a writer at Forbes it's Pizzagate and online vigilantism . For The