Dictionary.com has selected its word of the year for 2019: “existential.”
According to the site, “existential” is “often used when the fact of someone or something’s being—its very existence—is at stake. An existential threat to a species, for example, puts its continued existence in real, concrete peril.”
Dictionary.com chose the word because it has come up so often in internet searches this year, especially after news of mass shootings and natural disasters.
An article that explains a decade
Dictionary.com is right: much of the world is facing an existential crisis. A recent article by Washington Post columnist James Hohmann illustrates this fact powerfully. Looking back over the decade now ending, Hohmann reveals a striking international pattern of “discontent with authoritarian regimes.”
He begins with the resignation last Sunday of embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi amid “sustained protests for sweeping reform.” More than 430 demonstrators have reportedly been killed in Iraq during two months of unrest. Thousands of protesters are still camped out in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. Hohmann calls this “the biggest challenge to Iraq’s political order since the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.”
Next, he cites the Iranian regime’s use of “more violence than at any time since the Islamist revolution four decades ago to repress protests.” As many as 450 people, and possibly hundreds more, have reportedly been killed; another two thousand have been wounded; and seven thousand have been detained. An opposition leader is comparing this crackdown to the demonstration in 1978 that ignited the Islamic revolution.
In Lebanon, members of the military formed a human chain on Sunday to prevent violent clashes between rival protesters as a stalemate over forming a new government continues. In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of demonstrators marching peacefully on…
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