I must have missed the meeting where it was decided that, instead of saying “first anniversary” or “fifth anniversary”, as we always used to, people would henceforth say “one-year anniversary”, and so on.
This was mainly an American habit at first. But of late, for example, I’ve seen a headline in the Galway Advertiser about the “five-year anniversary of Hangar 7 in Shannon”. And in the current issue of Scotland’s the National, there’s a story about a Gaelic language charity announcing a “10-year anniversary gig”.
It’s as if everyone has simultaneously forgotten that the word “year” is already present, albeit disguised, in “anniversary”. You might forgive Americans not knowing that the second half of ‘anniversary’ means ‘turning’. But now it seems that the first half has also become bereft of meaning. It’s little orphan anni, all over again.
I’m tempted to blame Donald Trump for this new usage, if only because the latest example of it was in a report last week, in this newspaper, about events in the White House.
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Yes, even the great Keith Duggan is at it now. In his typically fine account of the destruction of the East Wing, our man in Washington wrote: “Trump is 79 and fast approaching the one-year anniversary of his election win over Kamala Harris.”
In the same piece, Keith notes the unofficial motto of the second Trump administration: “Move fast and break things”. Which could also apply to President’s relationship with language. But even if he isn’t to blame for this latest trend, his presidency seems to have coincided with it.
As far back as 2018 the “editorial guidance” section of the US’s National Public Radio was moved to remind its broadcasters and listeners: “‘first anniversary’ is OK; ‘one-year anniversary’ is not”. The occasion for that was the passage of 12 months since the Women’s March on Washington.
In fairness to Trump, he didn’t invent tautology. “One-year anniversaries” and the like are just part of a longer established trend whereby words that were doing a perfectly good job are suddenly deemed to need prefixes.
If you’re a dynamic business executive these days, for example, it’s not enough to plan things anymore; you have to ‘pre-plan’ them now. Being ‘active’, similarly, used to be considered good enough. But ‘active’ doesn’t burn enough calories anymore. People today are expected to be ‘proactive’’ as a minimum.
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The one just gone, I now realise, was the quinquadragennial Dublin City Marathon. “The what?” you may ask, unless you’re a quiz anorak. Then you will know that a quinquadragennial is the 45th anniversary of an event, in this case the inaugural marathon of 1980.
Beyond quizzes, of course, most such terms are pointless, because whenever you use them, you also have to explain what they mean. Hence vigentennial (20th anniversary), quadranscentennial (25th), sesquicentennial (150th), and so on.
In Wikipedia’s impressively exhaustive list, there is a term for every anniversary up to the 20th, after which only five-year intervals are marked up to 80, then 10-year intervals and greater. Strangely, however, there is no name on the list for a 21st anniversary, although that’s still a landmark birthday, much celebrated.
This reminds me of an old Frank Sinatra song – a jazz classic but also slightly disheartening for those of middle age or later: It was a Very Good Year. The lyrics feature a man looking back on his life via the metaphor of fine wine, while also recalling the different kinds of “girls” he knew at certain ages.
It begins soon after he has celebrated his septendecennial birthday: “When I was seventeen/It was a very good year/ For small-town girls and soft summer nights/ We’d hide from the lights/ On the village green/ When I was seventeen.”
Then we skip ahead to his no-name 21st: “When I was twenty-one/It was a very good year/ For city girls who lived up the stair/ With all that perfumed hair/ And it came undone/ When I was twenty-one.”
After that, it’s fast-forward to his quintricennial, by which time has fallen in with money. “When I was thirty-five/It was a very good year/ For blue-blooded girls of independent means/ We’d ride in limousines/ Their chauffeurs would drive/ When I was thirty-five.”
Many of us would be very curious to know what happened to our hero in his 40s, 50s, and beyond. Alas, we never find out, because in the fourth and final verse, suddenly, he’s on his last legs.
He doesn’t even bother mentioning ages anymore: “But now the days are short/I’m in the autumn of the year/And now I think of my life/ As vintage wine from fine old kegs/ From the brim to the dregs/ It poured sweet and clear/ It was a very good year.”
Seasonal as the sentiment is, in this week of the clock-change, it’s also a bit depressing. Life drinks well until you’re 35, is the message. Then it’s all over, except for the dregs.
