how polar words explain a changing world
- Written by Bernadette Hince, Visiting Fellow, Australian National Dictionary Centre, Australian National University
Most of us know there’s more than one version of English. What English people call a tap, Americans call a faucet; New Zealand’s jandals are Australia’s thongs. As well as British English, there are regional versions of Australian English, New Zealand English, and a significant number of other versions of English.
There is also a distinct vocabulary of polar English. It is so recently recognised, most of its words are not yet in the most comprehensive record of English, the Oxford English Dictionary.
In a time of climate change, these words are increasingly entering everyday use in the English language. As underlying permafrost (permanently frozen ground) melts and Arctic islands slip into the ocean, polar words – including permafrost – explain the change we are seeing.
My historical dictionary, Cold Words, collects these distinctively polar words. To find them, I read books, articles, plays, novels, newspapers, web pages, social media chats, even recipes. I wrote each likely word (and the quotation that used it) on a 100 by 150 mm card. Later, I switched to computer. These 70,000 quotations were my starting point.
These words include greenout, icefish, afterborn and sea ice.
What does ‘polar’ mean?
Climatologists, geographers, biologists and ocean scientists each have their own ideas of what constitutes the Arctic and the Antarctic. Anthropologist Igor Krupnik calls “pinning down exactly where the Arctic begins and ends” a “complicated matter”.
My dictionary includes words from Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Sápmi, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, the United States (Alaska) and northern Canada. It also includes words from the Antarctic, the subantarctic islands, Tristan da Cunha and the Falkland Islands.
The poles are not the shadowy places they once were.
Since the year of my birth, 1951, vast ice shelves have collapsed, glaciers have retreated and terrestrial habitat is under pressure. Remote polar tourism, which (in Antarctica’s case) boomed from the late 1980s, still flourishes today. Since 2007, the Northwest Passage, in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada, has begun to be regarded as a viable shipping route. The year 2024 was the hottest year on record.
Many polar factors indicate this heating: glacier retreat, polar sea surface temperature rises, and the extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover.
Warming words
The Arctic is warming faster than the global average. As a result of climate change, our eyes are on the polar regions.
It has affected everything from waves in sea ice (increased wave height and wind strength can speed up its disintegration) to the routes travelled by intercontinental ships.
The thickness and extent of arctic sea ice is diminishing, meaning northern sea routes (such as those between Europe and northwestern Asia) are becoming increasingly feasible. Other factors including low temperatures, high winds and poor visibility limit these routes.
In the south, the world’s strongest oceanic current, the antarctic circumpolar current, a deep current (or complex of currents) which links the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is in the spotlight.
The current’s speed and strength help keep warmer waters away from Antarctica. Its weakening would affect global oceanic circulation by allowing warmer waters to travel further south. Any resulting increase in the speed of sea level rise could have significant consequences for inhabiting this planet.
Political words
Politics makes words, too. The concept of Greenlandisation – restoring Greenlandic identity through culture, language and policy – has been around for decades.
Greenlandization, an idea that captured the spirit of the 1980s when Greenlandic culture, traditions and values were a focus.
– Mîtdlârak Lennert, University of Greenland PhD thesis, 2021
Greenland’s mineral wealth and strategic location have made it a target for recent geopolitical manoeuvring, as Donald Trump continues to call for the United States to take it over. Will we soon need another word, de-Greenlandisation?
Polar creatures
And in polar waters, creatures such as icefish have been discovered. Icefish, which occur in antarctic and subantarctic waters, are the only known vertebrates without red blood cells, or haemoglobin:
Icefish have see-through blood!
– Tania Medvedeva and Maria Vyshinskaya Around Antarctica (2022)
Creatures such as icefish are found only in Antarctic waters.
Wikipedia
We know there’s trouble with polar bear habitat (the polar bear is also known as white bear, nanook, sea bear and ice bear). We also know some polar phenomena might cease to exist in our lifetime.
One is the East Greenland current, a cold, low-salinity current flowing south along Greenland’s east coast. Another is multi-year ice: sea ice that has lasted more than two summers. Some polar creatures might cease to exist too: the polar bear, the blue whale and its prey, antarctic krill.
Some long-extinct cold-climate animals we know today only through the magic of their names: Steller’s sea cow; the flightless seabird great auk; the warrah, also called the Falkland Islands wolf. Others have come into English from many languages – gorfoo, for example, is an old French word for certain penguins.
A polar bear stands on an ice floe near the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Romas Dabrukas/AAP
The polar regions have also given us the greenout, a phenomenon which must have existed for centuries, although the word itself is much newer:
Many expeditioners have a greenout when they return [from Antarctica], because it’s been so long since they’ve seen trees.
– Nikki Gemmell, ABC Radio, Jan 1996
Preserving history
Words embody past values and judgements. Some words of polar English would today be considered offensive or scientifically inaccurate, but their existence is part of our history.
In the Arctic, this history shows the kind of institutionalised dismantling of Indigenous societies that also occurred in Australia. Words like afterborn and residential school describe this process.
Natives born after December 18, 1971, are called “afterborn”.
– Stephen Cubas People’s World online, May 12 2011
Despite the suppression of arctic languages in colonial times, words like ivu (an ice surge) and kayak have come into English from Inuit languages.
There is a move to preserve and reinvigorate these languages, restoring something of what has been lost. Documenting and exploring the origins of distinctive polar words – and seeing their pathways into our own language – is part of this process.
Authors: Bernadette Hince, Visiting Fellow, Australian National Dictionary Centre, Australian National University
