English
has an endless capacity to keep expanding its already stupendous vocabulary. Sometimes
current events or historical developments supply new words, often based on the
names of people, such as boycott, diesel, and mesmerize.
English
speakers will undoubtedly tap into the misfortune of the UK’s shortest serving
prime minister, Liz Truss. Gone after 45 days, the shortest tenure of any
British PM, Truss’s name is bound to enter our language.
It
may show up as a short measure of time, like a moment or jiffy, as
in:
“Are
you coming, dear?”
“Yes,
I’ll be there in a truss.”
Or it may take on the character of rare
words that have opposite meanings, like cleave (to split or to hold
together). Hence truss, defined by Merriam-Webster as “to secure
tightly.” But its new
additional meaning will be, “truss: to fall apart, collapse.” Example: “His poor
planning meant his business trussed within months.”
Some may turn to
distorting the word slightly, giving it the ironic usage of “Hey, just truss me
on this.” Similarly, drawing from those team-building exercises you may have
had to endure at summer camp, there’s a trust fall. By contrast, an
invitation to a truss fall foretells unmitigated failure.
Then
there’s Wiktionary’s definition of truss as a verb: “To tie up a bird
before cooking it”—surely a fitting
(albeit sexist) description of the doomed PM’s fate.
Who
knows, just as many of the nursery rhymes we learned as children had historical
roots, maybe our great-great-grandchildren’s repertoire will incorporate what
we are living through now:
Hickory dickory dock.
Poor Liz ran out the
clock.
The clock struck one
And she was gone.
Hickory dickory dock.
And
your great-great-granddaughter will ask, “Daddy, who was Liz?” He will reply,
“I don’t know. Let’s ask Alexa—it’ll take just a truss.”
[300 words]