Is ‘de-escalate’ in the running to be the Word of the Year for 2025? Or (as seems more likely) the Non-Word of 2025?  It was the initial reaction from Penny Wong and Athony Albanese to Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran into a ceasefire. While the rest of the world applauded the bold strategy, and successful mission, that decisively took Iran out of the nuclear club, all Wong and Albanese could bring themselves to say was ‘de-escalate’. Even when, 24 hours later, they were dragged kicking screaming into facing reality, they supported Trump’s decision and the precision bombing by the US Air Force –then almost immediately switched back to their bleated refrain of ‘de-escalate’. Their plaintive cry was often expanded to include such words and ‘dialogue’ and ‘diplomacy’. They seem to have forgotten that the first leader to try using ‘dialogue’ and ‘diplomacy’ to make the Iranians ‘de-escalate’ their goal of building nuclear weapons was Bill Clinton in 1995. Thirty years ago! That’s a lot of ‘dialogue and diplomacy’.But Wong and Albanese seem to think that just a little bit more time (another 30 years?) might see the same thing work that failed in the past. It’s a bit hard to see how a waggling finger accompanied by a firm pronouncement of the word ‘de-escalate’ might work better in 2025 than 1995. The word ‘escalation’ has meant ‘the act or process of increasing armaments’ (Oxford) since at least 1938. This whole word family began in America in 1900, originally as a trade name for a moving staircase. The world’s first escalator was built by the Otis Elevator Company for passengers using the New York ‘L’ – or the Manhattan Elevated Railway to give it its proper name. The noun ‘escalator’ gave rise to the verb ‘to escalate’ meaning ‘to move upwards’. This, in turn, gave rise to all the applications of the abstract noun ‘escalation’. And finally, in 1965, to it opposite ‘de-escalate’ (for those getting nervous about the ride and wanting to get off). But it turns out that bunker-buster ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ can make the Ayatollahs more included to leap off the escalator than yet another burst of feeble finger waggling from Canberra.

Contact Kel at ozwords.com.au