The Words of the Week - Sept. 9

’Launder’

A highly figurative sense of launder was much in the news last week, after Steve Bannon, formerly an advisor to Donald Trump, was indicted for allegedly doing this with some money.

Bannon charged with money laundering in wall-building scheme
— (headline) The Los Angeles Times, 8 Sept. 2022

The relevant sense of launder here is “to transfer (illegally obtained money or investments) through an outside party to conceal the true source.” The word, which can be traced to the Latin lavare (“to wash”), has a number of other meanings, most of which are closer to its origin (such as “to wash (something, such as clothing) in water” and  “to make ready for use by washing and ironing”).

The financial sense of laundering is a fairly recent one; our oldest written evidence comes from the 1960s. The word appears to have initially been used primarily in reference to the activities of organized crime.

”Normally, he explained, “payoff money is funneled into a dummy corporation, which pays the required corporate taxes. The remaining funds have been ‘laundered’ and are then available for use.”
— Los Angeles Times, 5 Apr. 1968

’Viral’

Viral, another word with a highly figurative sense, was also found in many articles last week, used in reference to a story involving a young man, his girlfriend, and a musical selection that many people felt was awkward.

A Redditor went viral last week after posting about how his girlfriend hates his sex playlist, specifically his favorite song on it: Hudson Mohawke’s “Cbat.”
— Kahlan Rosenblatt, NBC News, 6 Sept. 2022

We define viral as “quickly and widely spread or popularized especially by means of social media.” The word also can be defined as “of, relating to, or caused by a virus,” and virus itself has the meaning of “an extremely small particle that causes a disease and that spreads from one person or animal to another.” The social media-related use of viral, combined with go (or went), is relatively new, but may be slightly older than many think, in use since the end of the 20th century.

The promotion went viral-the Net's technologically amplified equivalent of spreading by word of mouth-far exceeding the reach of 800.com's own efforts.
— David F. Carr, Internet World (Cleveland, OH), 1 Dec. 1999

’Colossus’

Colossus was a word on the minds of many music lovers recently, as this past week saw the 92nd birthday of a man often called the Saxophone Colossus: Sonny Rollins.

Happy Birthday to the Saxophone Colossus Sonny Rollins 92 today pic.twitter.com/uioncKaJaG

— Sunday Jazz Lounge (@jazz_sunday) September 7, 2022

The sense of colossus most applicable to Rollins is “a person or thing of immense size or power.” The word may also mean “a statue of gigantic size and proportions.” Colossus is often used to describe the larger-than-life statues as were created by the ancient Greeks and Romans (such as the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue of the sun god Helios built on the Greek island of Rhodes around 280 B.C. that was over 100 feet tall and took more than 12 years to build). The application of this word to Rollins came about after the release of his 1956 album, Saxophone Colossus. Colossus is typically pluralized as colossi rather than colossuses, information which is relevant mainly to the pluralization of statues, as there will never be another Sonny Rollins.

’Squaw’

The word squaw was found in a number of articles last week as well, after it was announced that it had recently been removed from hundreds of place names on federal land.

The Biden administration on Thursday said it had completed the removal of the word "squaw" from nearly 650 place names on federal land as part of an effort to reckon with the nation's racist past. The Interior Department had said in November of last year that it was beginning a process to do away the word, a term for Indigenous women that Native Americans find offensive.
— Reuters, 8 Sept. 2022

We offer two definitions of squaw: “an Indigenous woman of North America” and “woman, wife.” The first sense is labelled offensive, and the second sense is labelled dated, disparaging + offensive. The word comes from squa, a word meaning “woman” in Massachusett (the extinct Algonquian language of the Massachusett people).

Words Worth Knowing: ’Scripturient’

Our word worth knowing this week is scripturient, defined as “having a strong urge to write.” The word has not been in common use for some centuries, and before you apply it to yourself it may be helpful to know that it was not always used in a complimentary fashion.

Here lies the corps of William Prynne,
A Bencher late of Lincolns Inn,
Who restless ran through thick and thin.
This grand scripturient paper-spiller,
This endless, needless margin-filler,
Was strangly tost from post to pillar.
— Anthony Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, 1691