Onions should be word of the year

Ever since an onion shortage gripped the Philippines since late last year, the word onion has daily been on every Filipino's lips even if the commodity itself was very hard to come by. With a population of 110 million, with only a fraction of that still below speaking or understanding age, you can just imagine how many tens of millions of times the word onion has been spoken during the shortage that continues to this day.

News of the shortage has also spread globally, fueled not just by the fact of the shortage itself but, to a large degree, by the great lengths to which Filipinos attempt to make light out of adversity. To my knowledge two weddings have already been held using onions as endearing pieces of nuptial memorabilia --bunches of onions as bouquets, and woven palm frond bags filled with onions as giveaways.

Such unique human interest stories can generate a far wider global audience than the straight and staid economic news of a shortage ever could. Whether offbeat or regular, just having onions at the very core of such stories ensures an utterance, and at least a few repetitions of the word onion. And this does not even include the pass-on reach of the word during conversations.

As of this writing, the saga of the onion in the Philippines is not about to come to an end. Reports of the entry of smuggled onions and the arrival of imported ones are guaranteed to whet the interest of a media industry that is notorious for bleeding a particular subject bone-dry. There will be an almost endless media pursuit of these twin developments regardless of where each story may take them.

And don't forget that there are inquiries on the shortage that have been rolled out by the Senate and the Ombudsman that are ongoing. These will ensure as well the survivability of the word onion well into the end of the second quarter of this year and quite possibly beyond. Even the flight crew of a Philippine Air Lines flight who brought in a few kilos of onions for personal purposes are being investigated.

The Philippines is also a haven for inveterate copycats. Earlier in this article I mentioned the occurrence of at least two "onion weddings”. I am pretty sure we have not seen the last of such antics. The ingenuity of Filipinos is truly amazing. Proof are the memes created by Filipinos, not just about onions but of every other subject under the sun. So I expect to see a few more variations of "onion-weddings" to come.

But I do wish couples intending to tie the knot soon would desist from going down that line. There is a much wider field for the imagination to play in when creating memes. Weddings do not enjoy the same latitude. In fact, after the second "onion-wedding" I think the idea has become passé. Of course it is not my wedding and would-be couples are free to do what they want. All I am saying is that the fad has staled.

But back to the premise of this column, which is that the word onion has, I think, a very good shot at being word of the year, not as a new word, but based on the frequency of its usage. The only dampener to this idea if ever it blooms into fruition is that the word will be a testament, not to one of our great moments, but to one of our most shameful. So much so that if the onion could talk, it would certainly beg off.

Consider the other words that have come to be associated with the onion phenomenon in the Philippines. They are all full of negative connotations: Shortage, smuggling, hoarding, overpricing, expensive, corruption, inefficiency, neglect, poverty, investigation, politicizing, grandstanding. The only good word that I can throw into that mix is wedding. But even that is iffy under the circumstances of its inclusion.