Hello, 2025.
My first retirement-era word relates, in my brain, to old age. It means to complain in a high-pitched voice. Sounds like a great deal of the Internet, doesn’t it?
I’m not here to complain. I’d like, first, to thank all of you readers who came by for my retirement reception. It humbled me to meet so many of you. Who the heck reads blogs these days?
Some of you. So thank you. I am not fully retired, however; I will be teaching a graduate course, “Writing With and About AI” for our School of Continuing Studies. AI will undoubtedly give us many new words and metaphors, but let’s stick to the Simpsons’ character yelling at a cloud. How did the word get associated with one’s “golden years”?
Etymology Online notes connections we might guess, to words such as “quarrel” with some rather old roots, “from Old French querelos ‘quarrelsome, argumentative’ and directly from Late Latin querulosus, from Latin querulus ‘full of complaints, complaining,’ from queri ‘to complain.’ ”
My notes about the word say “NB Wharton,” meaning “nota bene the novelist Edith,” one of my favorite writers. If I recall correctly, she used the word a bit in her works but her biographer R.W.B. Lewis also described her as being rather querulous in her later years.
I suppose if one must complain, it must be stated clearly, not weakly. Perhaps that’s our link to elderly mumble-grumbling? Who is listening, at that point? I plan on none of that, thank you.
May your voices be strong, not querulous, as you make yourselves heard. Our word has, after a long decline in usage, doubled in frequency since 2010. Good or bad? We can chat about that while getting senior discounts on coffee.
If you think of any words or metaphors to share with the community in 2025, send them to me at jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu or by leaving a comment below.
See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.