Wretched, vile, appalling don't cover it. Grim, ghastly, abominable are weak.
When it comes to 2020, the year of COVID, of quarantine, of unemployment, of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, of forest fires and hurricanes and nonstop election madness, of closed schools and shuttered restaurants and 3,000 dead
every day — the equivalent of a new 9/11 every 24 hours
— the English language fails us.
Luckily, the English prepared for just such an emergency.
Latin, at the great British public schools, was always the basis of a gentleman's education. So Queen Elizabeth II didn't hesitate when confronted by the year 1992.
It was, she said famously, her