287. What happened to normality?

I’m concerned by the disappearance of normality. Not the actual quality. That is, indeed, disappearing. If you need convincing, take a look at the range of characters in costumes that assaulted the Capitol the other day, or review, say, the video of a rampant, clumsy Boris Johnson aggressively running through five year olds in what was meant to be a mock rugby game. But today’s post is concerned with the disappearance of normality, the word. A perfectly good word, in perfectly common, dare I say, normal, use. And then, a few months ago, it disappeared from American reporting, suddenly and unexpectedly replaced, everywhere, by the much less common ‘normalcy’. Those of us who have been speaking English with normality for years, suddenly had to guess what we might be returning to when returning to normalcy as promised after the coronavirus pandemic or Trump’s presidency, and checking dictionaries to confirm the word is not the figment of a febrile, COVID afflicted, journalist’s imagination 

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