OTTAWA — British etymologist Susie Dent offered the archaic best wishes of “respair” (fresh hope) and “respiscence” (a return to a better frame of mind) on social media as we entered the new year.
But for Canadian political watchers, the mood was likely closer to another of Dent’s obsolete nouns — “humdudgeon,” an imaginary illness caused by a sense of it all being over, pending a return to a gloomy reality.
