Commentary: The word of the week is ‘eke’ (and also ‘eek’)
November 6, 2020
We’ve been spelling it wrong forever. Well, OK, since Tuesday.
“We could still win! But it won’t be a landslide,” my friend Miranda texted around 7:40 p.m. from Oakland on election night. “We will have to eek it out.”
“Let’s Eek It Out!” I replied, with desperate enthusiasm.
Over the ensuing 24 hours, I texted several more “eek-it-outs,” in various forms, to various friends. And I’m not the only one. Francesca Fiorentini — a comedian and blue-check host of “The Bitchuation Room” podcast, misspelled the simple three-letter word, too. “Biden may eek out a victory but it will be unacceptably close,” she tweeted Wednesday night. Even an English professor at Boston College with a Ph.D. spelled it wrong (albeit after midnight on a long Night Two): “There is still a part of me that fears the numbers will turn bad somehow and Trump will eek out a win, and that part of me is likely to exist until January.” (Me too, Dr. Song.)
Wait a minute, I realized apropos of nothing over my second glass of wine on Wednesday: It’s eke, of course! I shared the breaking news with my family as we sat on the couch — facing another night without any.
Eke: “To get with great difficulty,” as defined by Merriam-Webster. Or, per Oxford dictionary: “Obtain or create, but just barely.” Synonyms for eke include: to wrest, to wring, to scrape (up or together). Meaning: Keep counting, Maricopa County! Let’s wrap this up, Pennsylvania! Thank you, Georgia!
Eek, however, I realized, has its own kind of relevance right now. Eek’s dictionary definition: “used as an expression of alarm, horror, or surprise.”
As in, eek: People are armed, chanting and engaging in intimidation outside the government building where volunteer ballot counters are working around the clock to ensure our democracy remains intact.
Eek: I just ate an entire large sausage-jalapeño pizza while contemplating the fact that, based on an unscientific study of tops worn by several political talking heads, puffy sleeves are back in fashion.
Eek: No matter what happens, we have to face the sad fact nearly 70 million Americans want a race-baiting, climate-denying, COVID-flouting aspiring autocrat to rule our country.
Last night, as I watched my daughter’s eyes droop while she watched Wolf Blitzer shuffle back and forth in front of John King’s map, I felt a long-lost sense of optimism for her future. I also urged her to go to bed. “Why don’t you go put on your pajamas?” I asked, knowing I should do the same. She looked up from her beanbag and said, with wit beyond her years: “Why don’t you go eke out an eek piece?”
And so, too distracted to do much else today: I hereby bestow you, dear reader, with this wee bit of wisdom to use in texts and tweets as you wish. As we practice the other word of this week: patience.