Holy crap, it’s mid-December already! It feels more like mid-October to me, especially with the weather around here (and lots of other places) lately. I mean, it was 66° here yesterday, which is most decidedly not December-like. And it’s not as though yesterday was a fluke – thanks to El Niño it’s been way warmer than normal, and out current snow total stands at eight-tenths of an inch (which is close to two feet below average for this time of year). They say we may turn a bit more seasonable this weekend, but that’s not supposed to last long and they’re predicting a warm (and green) Christmas. I, for one, am definitely not complaining.

I thought it was stupid a few months ago when the Oxford Dictionaries declared this: to be the “word” of the year. That is quite simply not a “word.” It’s a picture (so I suppose it ought to be worth 1,000 words).

Now, Merriam-Webster has declared their word of the year to be “ism.” I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a word, either. From Merriam-Webster itself, the definition of “word” is:

…a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.

While it is a sound, and it isn’t really “divisible into smaller units capable of independent use,” I don’t think you can say that it communicates a meaning on it’s own. Plus I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t count in Scrabble®. Back in my olde tyme English class days, we used to call that a “suffix.”

But at least it isn’t a picture, so there’s that.