The lexicon of lockdown: a guide to the new corona-speak
By James Macpherson The Spectator
The coronavirus epidemic has completely changed the world, including the way we speak. Words that only yesterday meant one thing now denote something entirely different.
This helpful Lexicon will give you the vocabulary to successfully navigate your way through the crisis.
Airline: A company that owns lots of planes that don’t fly anywhere.
Celebrity: A multi-millionaire who sits in a mansion telling you not to complain about being stuck at home with no job.
Climate Change: A term you might vaguely remember from a distant past.
COVID-19: A virus charged with doing to Trump what neither CNN, the Democrats, nor Robert Mueller have been able to do.
Drinking Home Alone: The act of a miserable loser now transformed into that of a heroic citizen serving as an inspiration to all.
Essential Worker: A term the government uses to describe someone other than you.
Experts: People who may or may not be wrong.
Face Mask: Something worn to save you, or them, or both, or neither. No one’s sure.
Globalisation: A word to describe the fact that we are now all residents of Wuhan.
Grocery Shopping: A great day out.
Hand Sanitiser: Lotion that is said to protect you from flu, cancer & vampires.
Hand Washing: The correct public response to excessive media hand-wringing.
Incubation Period: The time it takes citizens to go from cooperative to seething with rage at being forced to stay home.
Panic Buying: A strategy people use to stay calm when they have no idea why they are panicking.
Patient Zero: A term used to describe that one guy – there’s always one — who just had to go and eat a bat.
Saving the World: The act of staying home for months, doing nothing but watching Netflix.
Shaking Hands: An act of aggression aimed at someone you hope dies.
Socialism: When the government closes your place of employment so that you are shut down, must stay in, don’t work, get paid, express anger at those who want to get you back to work — and vote accordingly.
Stampede: Three people running together at a local park.
Taiwan: A word no politician will speak, for fear China will respond with another deadly virus.
Testing Positive: A happy moment for celebrities whose careers were waning, encouraged they will now receive world-wide publicity.
Toilet Paper: A rare collectable — along with pasta, flour & four-leaf clovers.
Touching Your Face: An action worse than scratching your butt.
Travel Ban: A terribly racist idea that should have been done sooner.
Travel Plans: Deciding whether your next trip will be to the kitchen, the lounge room, the laundry or the bathroom.
Uni Degree: Something that won’t help you get an actual job, like stacking shelves.
WHO: A practical joke played by the UN wherein a Communist mouthpiece, paid for by the United States, pretends that warning people not to call the Chinese Virus the Chinese Virus is the same as issuing important health advice.
Wuhan Market: A Chinese eatery guaranteed to take your breath away.
Your Seventies: The new Nineties.
2020: A year that was cancelled.