Esteemed linguistic body the Académie Faquebooze has chosen the word ‘vinsplaining’ to be its ‘Word of the Year’ for 2020.
The word narrowly beat off a rising R-number of drinks terms relating to batflu, including Zoom-tasting, gindemic, quarantini, hockdown and Sercial distancing.
‘I’ll make it simple…’
The Académie defines vinsplaining as ‘the act of talking over someone about their drinks choice, of repeating their own comments back to them, or explaining something in a patronising manner, often incorrectly.’
The Académie added that it is ‘pronounced “van-splay-ning” in case you were wondering.’
‘Obviously, Covid has been the biggest story of the year,’ said Professor Lynne Guistic from the Académie, ‘but the ability of journalists, geeks and importers to talk utter balls about booze has been a thing since long before the Coronavirus reared its spiky head.
‘Make no mistake, even when Covid is no more than a common cold, vinsplaining will still be going strong.
‘Indeed, given that dispensing half-baked theories, misunderstood facts and full-on prejudice in a condescending manner has been the bedrock of most drinks communication for centuries, we’re surprised it took so long to come up with a word for it.’
Women can do it too!
According to the Académie, vinsplaining most often refers to men talking down to women. But there are a growing number of incidents of women vinsplaining too, even in public.
And certain highly skilled operators, such as French sommeliers, are able to vinsplain large groups of both men and women, apparently at will.
‘Men are naturally better at it, it’s true, but they don’t have a monopoly on the ability to be stupid and patronising about booze,’ said professor Guistic.
‘In fact, you could argue that it’s one of the few areas of the drinks world where women are anywhere close to achieving parity.’
