What was meant by normalcy

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Cancel Submit. Press, Arkansas Online , 2 Nov. First Known Use of normalcy , in the meaning defined above. Learn More About normalcy. Time Traveler for normalcy The first known use of normalcy was in See more words from the same year.

From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. Did Warren Harding Coin 'Normalcy'? The word actually comes from mathematics. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of normalcy.

Kids Definition of normalcy. Medical Definition of normalcy. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Early on in his campaign, Harding seemed to be testing out the word as he created a message that would appeal to those weary from the upheavals of World War I and—mirroring our own time—a deadly influenza pandemic. Audio from Harding re-creating that speech survives, and it allows us to hear him incorporate the word into his less-than-thrilling rhetoric.

Normalcy was unusual enough that many commentators assumed that Harding had simply made it up—a misconception that gets repeated to this day. In fact, the word had been in use since at least , albeit in a technical way, when it appeared in a mathematical dictionary.

Five years later, a reviewer in the magazine The New Englander , surveying the latest dictionaries from Webster and Worcester, included normalcy among the newish words that neither dictionary had yet captured along with other items like bisexuality , orgiastic , and slackjaw.

By that point, normalcy had at least moved past its mathematical origins and could be found in theological discussions , ones that Harding, a devout Baptist, may have absorbed.