McWhorter on the power and story of that word
John McWhorter is a Columbia University linguist who writes weekly columns “explor[ing] how race and language shape our politics and culture” that appear in the NYTimes. Words are slippery. They morph. They take on different meanings in different eras: just read try to read Shakespeare or Beowulf in the original—or compare the multitude of modern-day interpretations of Biblical text.
I plan to return to my usual focus on Eastern Washington civics and politics next week. For today, the day after the close of the Democratic National Convention, and the day after another immuno-chemo infusion, I’m going to take a break. Instead, I offer below John McWhorter’s NYTimes essay on the word “weird.” (A gift link is found by clicking the title so you should also be able read it at the Times website for free.) I found it fascinating and I wanted to share its wordy insight
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
The Hidden Grammatical Reason That ‘Weird’ Works
Aug. 22, 2024
When Gov. Tim Walz called Donald Trump and his worldview “weird,” it got immediate attention, launched a thousand memes and may very well have helped him land the job as Kamala Harris’s running mate. Michelle Obama’s dictum that “when they go low, we go high” is admirable, but there’s a lot to be said for the occasional step or two down the ladder. To many observers, “weird” immediately seemed right, a fresh approach to the mix of childish cattiness and outright menace coming from opponents of Walz and Harris. But the reasons for its success as an epithet aren’t as obvious. They come from deep in the word’s history, and in the ultimate purpose to which we put language.
In Old English the word meant, believe it or not, “what the future holds,” as in what we now refer to as fate. The sisters in “Macbeth” were the “weird sisters,” in the meaning of “fate sisters,” telling the future. But they were also portrayed as ghoulish in appearance and attire. With the prominence of this play and similar fate-sister figures in other ones, the sense set in that “weird” meant frighteningly odd.
In the 20th century, the word lost its hint of the macabre as its meaning became something quieter. “Weird” now means peculiar — perhaps passingly so, but against what one would expect.
In this sense, “weird” has settled into a realm of the language that isn’t taught as grammar in our schools but should be. Verbal communication is not only about whether something is in the past or the future, or whether it is singular or plural. It’s also about what is novel. We tend to seek people’s attention to tell them something they don’t yet know.
Imagine someone new to the English language asking you what the “even” in “He even had a horse” means. It would be hard, because school doesn’t teach us about the role that identifying novelty plays in how we form sentences. “He even had a horse” implies that someone’s possession of a horse, as opposed to just a big backyard, a fence and some dogs, is unexpected. All languages have ways of doing this. In Saramaccan, a language I have studied that was created by Africans who escaped slavery in Suriname, a little word, “noo” — pronounced “naw” — shows that something is news. “Noo mi o haika i” means not just “I will call you” but also “So, OK then, I will call you.”
Applying “weird” to MAGA is a great debate team tactic, a deceptively complex rhetorical trick that uses the simplest of language to make a sophisticated point: that the beliefs that MAGA is supposed to be getting us back to defy expectation, usually for the simple reason that they’re false.
The idea that Central American countries engage in an effort to send criminals to America not only is mean, it also fails to accord with any intuitive or documented analysis. The idea that we should all go smilingly back to an era when it was illegal for women to obtain an abortion — as though there was something sweet about Roberta’s situation in Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” in 1925 — goes against what 90 percent of Americans espouse. It is callous to a degree that a great many find perplexing. The idea that a single woman without children is less qualified to lead is jarring even amid the trash talk flying throughout our political landscape.
The typical response to all of this from the outside is to shudder at the nastiness. But an equally valid response is “Huh?” And that’s why “weird” works.
“Weird” works in another way, too: There is no great comeback. You can’t respond to being called peculiar by simply saying, “No, I’m not,” though Trump tried: “He said we’re weird,” the candidate complained, “that JD and I are weird. I think we’re extremely normal people, exactly like you.” Just asserting it convinces no one. Nor does the “No, you are!” defense. On X, Representative Matt Gaetz jibed: “The party of gender blockers and drag shows for kids is calling us weird? Ok.” But we’ve heard all that before. “Weird” is a way to call out the unexpected. Any perceived weirdness on the left is old news. It’s the Democrats who are offering the novel take.
The goal here is not getting down into the mud but opening ourselves to broader perception. Outsiders can view MAGA with dismay, intimidated by how many people subscribe to it, watch its adherents portray themselves as the only true Americans and shake our heads in horror and submission. Or we can dismiss MAGA as more heat than light. We can resist the notion that the essence of America is an ideology whose figurehead lost the popular vote in the presidential election of 2016, lost the election entirely in 2020 and may well lose again this fall. “Weird” pegs MAGA as a detour, a regrettable temptation that a serious politics ought to render obsolete. Calling it “weird” is deft, articulate, and possibly prophetic.
It’s also an example of the power of language, in particular a kind of grammar that too few people are taught. Wouldn’t more kids take interest in the subject if they knew they could use it to shut down a bully.