There are no words.

Wretched, vile, appalling don’t cover it. Grim, ghastly, abominable are weak.

When it comes to the year 2020, the year of COVID, of quarantine, of unemployment, of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, of forest fires and hurricanes and non-stop election madness, of closed schools and shuttered restaurants and 3,000 dead every day — the equivalent of a new 9/11 every 24 hours — the English language fails us.

Luckily, the English prepared for just such an emergency.

Latin, at the great British public schools, was always the basis of a gentleman’s education. So Queen Elizabeth II didn’t hesitate when confronted by the year 1992.

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