It's January 2026, and my apologies for not posting recently. Lots of writing and family travel. In the meanwhile, 2026 has brought with it, oh, so many new variants of the "flood the zone" strategy employed by the current US administration. And because there are more than enough political blogs and pundits in the world already, we won't be going political here. However, since I love words and their meaning and history, I thought it might be interesting to explore two in particular that seem apropos at the moment. 

1. Disgrace

Let's start with the Merriam Webster definition: transitive verb: "to be a source of shame to", "to cause to lose favor." 

I thought of the word roots, "dis-" and "grace," and surmised the origins might have something to do with the idea of being distant from, or separated from, God. Sure enough, looking up the etymology, in late 12th century literature, there is the mention of grace as "God's unmerited favor, love or help," and adding the prefix "dis-" (opposite) would indicate a detachment or separation from that favor. Weirdly enough, the word "grace" had a use in the church when translated from the Greek word kharisma. Another 16th century definition of disgrace is: "disfigure, deprive of grace, put out of favor, dismiss with discredit." So, for my first word of the year, disgrace seems to be a timely one. 

2. Depraved

A number of words have been bandied about recently, all descriptive and articulate. Some of those include vulgarity, degradation, corruption, abomination, obscene, perverse and abhorrent, But, fun as they are, none seem to quite hit the mark for me. Then I thought of legal terminology, and there we got it: depraved. Definition: "marked by corruption or evil," "having or showing an evil and immoral character." And as I suspected, the actual legal definition is even more precise: "characterized by extreme cruelty and immorality, often demonstrated  through violence."

So, depraved gets my vote for most appropriate word of the moment. At least here in the US. 

 =========================================== 

 Just an update to the post above .... 

That piece was posted on January 26, 2026. Today is February 6, 2026. Today, the President of the United States published a video containing the image below. That's all. Just let me say this again so there's no confusion ... the President of the United States of America published the image below today.