In Rana Nelson's Grade 11 creative writing class, one can't say for certain who first coined their official definition for "tariffism," a phenomenon that's become all to familiar to Canadians this year amid looming 25 per cent U.S. import taxes.
Revelstoke Secondary School's Jack Peak was the student to read aloud his peers' collectively-crafted sentence, and has been investigating just how to land this unique and very timely definition into the world's leading dictionary.
However, students spoke up in class Thursday, Feb. 13, to emphasize this has truly been a collaborative effort, sparked by Nelson's week-long writing activity.
"This is exactly why I went into teaching," said Nelson, who spent decades as an editor and is now in her second year working at RSS.
While technically "tariffism" may be synonymous with "mercantilism," Nelson insists "it's not the same," as U.S. President Donald Trump's recent actions warrant a dedicated definition.
"It's not Trumpism," she reiterated. "It's 'tariffism.'"
Nelson's exercise began with her couple dozen students, who attend the course four days per week, having lessons on writing definitions and how words enter the English lexicon. They then applied those lessons to inventing their own definitions for "tariffism." The class told Black Press Media a common theme among their respective definitions was some reference to a political strategy or tactic.
"Then a couple days later I switched up the groups and said, 'here are the ones who made the cut,'" Nelson said.
As the week progressed, Nelson combined her students into bigger groups to work toward a single, well-rounded definition, which Peak volunteering to read out: "Tariffism is a political strategy using import taxes to exploit and/or coerce a country by putting them in financial distress."
But Nelson's class, featured earlier this week on the CBC's Daybreak South morning show, began advocating to take their definition to a whole other level after their interview with Chris Walker, whose "tariffism" chat with another caller Nelson heard on the radio inspired this activity.
"As soon as I hung up the phone, they started cheering," Nelson recalled, adding she could see her students withholding laughter during the call. "They started saying, 'we want to go to Oxford!'"
With a polished definition in hand, the class now hopes to make a world-class entry into the Oxford English Dictionary. As well, Nelson, who in her previous career wrote definitions for the Nelson Canadian Dictionary of the English Language (no relation to her), will see whether she can sell her former colleagues on getting the definition into the Canadian dictionary market.
"I'll call Nelson," she said, adding she needs to appeal to her namesake dictionary anyway about updating some things. Meanwhile, "Jack's going to work on Oxford."
Peak said he's already started scouring the web for next steps, though noted it's no hop, skip and a jump for any new definition into the English lexicon.
"It has to be in fairly regular use," Nelson explained, which includes the word and definition circulating for a while, though she adds the internet has come to play a much larger role today spreading new lingo since its genesis back in her early days as an editor.
For now, it may take time for this lexical product of Nelson's class to meet Oxford's threshold for it to appear in a "variety of sources."
Nevertheless, when asked for his final comments on the matter, an Oxford-optimistic Peak said, "You'll see me in the president's office - I mean, the prime minister's!"
Nelson's class acknowledged her for planning such an engaging academic activity with real-world timeliness and value - though one student queried whether they were all getting paid for this.
"If we get a sponsor to go to Oxford, I'll take them to England - let's go," Nelson encouraged. "Why stop here?"
To learn more about the Oxford English Dictionary's word entry requirements, visit oed.com/information/editorial-policy/how-words-enter-the-oed.
