Social Distancing – staying at least six feet away from other people. Formerly called being antisocial when used for people who were way ahead of their times.

Videochatting – talking to your television out of loneliness or the fear that you may have forgotten how to talk because of social distancing. Replaced talking to yourself, which some saw as a sign of mental instability. See Sheldon Cooper’s morning vocal test.

Postpone – put off a decision in the hope that, when the time comes, it will be someone else’s responsibility.

Cancel – what an organization does to a scheduled event after being embarrassed by other groups taking quicker action.

Take a cruise – the way teenagers used to aimlessly drive around the neighborhood looking for friends who were similarly driving around, with the hope that someone would suggest going for chocolate ice cream, or, in rougher neighborhoods, Rocky Road. Now, it just means to act stupidly.

Bear Market – something that “financial experts” predict every chance they get so that eventually they’ll be correct.

Quarantine – a word derived from a seventeenth-century Venetian variant of the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning “forty days”, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic. While there is no apparent connection to Noah, 40 days sure does seem like a big coincidence and Rule 39 for Gibbs on NCIS is that there are no coincidences. Moreover, artificial refrigeration didn’t begin until the mid-1750s, so that’s a lot of jerky.

Flattening the curve – what professors sometimes do in terms of grading, or a visual aid used to try to convince people to social distance and that it’s no one’s fault that our health care system was unprepared. If only we had thought to create a National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense.