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Just like us, when discussing the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, I and others were shocked by the threatening uncertainty of its potential impact, including sporadic economic concerns and the new (grief!) fourth dose of the vaccine. Guess. But as a linguist, I certainly feel that the word itself is accidental. "AH-mih-kron", most of us would say, or "OH-mih-kron", many of us didn't know how it was spelled at least at first, only heard its voice.

I’ve spent most of this year worrying about the Delta variant, and since the word “delta” is relatively common, the emergence of Omicron may be the first time many of us have taken the time to notice the Covid-19 variant, and we are Running the Greek alphabet, there are some jumps-there seems to be no shortage of new variants, but there is no Nu variant. Even those who know that omicron is a Greek letter may never unravel the original meaning, namely "little O", such as "微" O.

Contrast this with omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet. At least once, these two letters distinguished the long and short "O" pronunciation. The name of Omega in "mega" O means "big O", and despite the way we pronounce it, we cannot hear the "mega" part related to the prefixes we use in words such as megawatt or megabyte. Likewise, when we say "Omicron", the last thing we think of is the prefix "micro" we use in microscopes or microphones.

Over time, the pronunciation of words was severely damaged and changed in millions of mouths. Words become shorter, they become longer, they become fuzzy, their voices change positions. At the same time, their meaning extends to other things. "Audience" used to refer only to listening. Then it refers to hearing someone try the play by reciting the lines. After a while, it mentioned evaluating the general performance of the applicant-now, you can audition to become a pantomime actor.

What I like is that these evolutions are normal. Each word is just the current interpretation of something that is constantly changing. "Damn it!" someone said. But just two centuries ago, English speakers would not recognize it as a real word. At the beginning people exclaimed: "By the eternal God!" Like many common expressions, abbreviated as "through eternity!" Then, just like some people express "learning" as "larn", many people say "Through'tarnal", and then use "tarnal" as an independent adjective. Comics and reviews of the mid-19th century are full of it.

The situation when a person says "tarnal" is the same as the situation when you might also say "Damnation!". As a result, people began to exclaim "Tarnation!" And because there was "damn", it was natural to think that both "tarnation" and "tarn" exist, or it sounds more like "damn", "damn", From a veritable change buffet.

These developments, especially shortening, may be particularly good. I am reading a novel and one of the maids often says "yes" to the woman she works for. "'M" begins with two complete words, "mea domina", which means "my lady" or "my mistress" in Latin. This is abbreviated as "madame" in French, and it is passed to English and further abbreviated as "ma'am", followed by the hiccup "'m" in "yes'm".

This kind of thing is almost ubiquitous by anyone anywhere on the planet. This is why I am not surprised that "brother", a straightforward term for siblings that may never change, has now become "oh, come on!" It's not straightforwardly angry "Oh, brother!" It is quite old now, but it has a sense of hierarchy. The concise "bruh" expresses the way that life can make us a lot of burdens. Someone said: "My mother wants me to tile her bathroom." His friend shook his head and mumbled: "Blu..."

To me, these things are examples of inevitable close matches between words and expressions and what they refer to. That is, it is strange when the pronunciation and meaning of the words have not changed, rather than when they have changed.

In some cases, a word always has the same meaning: as New York University linguist Gregory Guy told Nautilus, "lox" has been pronounced the same way for thousands of years, referring to salmon. But even for everyday words like lox (no disrespect for salmon, smoked salmon, or anything else), you can bet that it will happen sooner or later, and the passage of time will smash it with a pestle and refract it through a prism. The point is almost unrecognizable.

In Infernal Affairs, Jack Nicholson’s gang asked Matt Damon’s corrupt state police, "Who is the chief detective?" and said, "Very good. He is a lox, which roughly means "dumb." In In the first season of "Cleveland Fever," the character played by Wendy Malik complained about Juliet in the school's "Romeo and Juliet", and she said: "She's a skunk. When she died last, no one can tell because she has not been angry. "

that's all. "Omicron" is my favorite example recently, but the new year will definitely bring more.

Any feedback? Send a note to McWhorter-newsletter@nytimes.com.

John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He hosts the podcast "Dictionary Valley" and is most recently the author of "Awakening Racism: How New Religions Betray Black Americans."