Awareness of discord and conflict coincides with the coalescing of tighter communities. But, as we might expect early in a Crisis era, this has happened mainly at the “small platoon” level of personal association. Words that have risen steeply in usage include friends, neighbors, family, clan, teamwork, and like-minded—along with lonely. What has been falling, on the other hand, is any word that refers to large, trusted civic institutions. These include organization, committee, citizen, member, rules, laws, official, order, procedure, connected.
