The cover of last week’s edition of Time magazine reads “2020” in black type set on a white background, crossed out with a blood-red X. Below that is the text: “Worst year ever” in capital letters in three rows, one word on each row, as if to stress the weight of each word.
It was a merciless image and an assault on the visual sense.
The world is nearing the end of this year. Looking back, many people will share the feeling that this was the worst year ever.
It has truly been an eventful year: The world has seen upheaval and continuous disaster. Surely the COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst of them all.
I am a lecturer in Soochow University’s English department. One of the classes I teach is an elective, English word formation. I first taught this class in the fall semester of 2000, 20 years ago.
Starting from the different ways of word formation, the class systematically teaches the formation of individual English words.
The proportion of foreign loan words in English is very high, and about half of them are borrowed from Latin.
Two words that I mention every year are annus horribilis, literally “a horrible year,” although the more colloquial “a year full of disasters” perhaps renders its meaning better.
This is an exceedingly appropriate description for this year.
In the poem Ode to the West Wind published 200 years ago, British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley asked: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
This winter, the world finds itself in the grip of the pandemic, and while it might be a cold and long winter, it will be followed by spring, and when spring comes, it will have left the pandemic far behind.
This year has indeed been a global annus horribilis.
However, as people look forward, they see 2021; this is the year when things will take a turn for the better. People will sit in the shade of willows, enjoy the calm and forget the sorrows of the past year; it will be an annus mirabilis, a year of miracles.
Let us greet the coming year with heartfelt hopes for a good life for all.
Hugo Tseng is an associate professor and former chair of Soochow University’s English language and literature department.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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