The American republic is tottering toward its 250th birthday like a character in a Jimmy Buffett song: debauched and in debt, but with its Stanley cup half full and its flip-flops still flapping. Meanwhile, American English remains forever young, a furnace of deregulated creativity. The French language is regulated by the “immortals” of the Académie Française. This is the linguistic equivalent of dirigiste economics, and about as good for growth. The English language grows by the free market, just like Margaritaville Holdings LLC. Put a neologism in print or digital circulation, and if there’s a demand for it, the dictionaries will recognize it.

You read it here first: the word of the year for 2026 will be semiquincentennial. The new Rome gets older, but the old Rome is always with us. An alternative coinage, sesquibicentenntial, is floating around online, but do the Latin math. Sesqui means “one-and-a-half,” bi means “two,” and centennial means “100.” A sesquibicenntenntialis 1.5 x 200 = 300. America’s sesquicentennial will fall in 2076, so you have 50 years to print the T-shirts. The big one in 2026 is the semiquincentennial. For patriotic up-sellers, the quarter-millennium. For Latinists, the quartamillenium, or even the quartamilliarum.

Back to the linguistic embers of the dying year. December is the month........

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