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    The war in Ukraine has reintroduced these words and phrases into our vocabulary

    We're using new geopolitical and military terms – and resurrecting and revising old ones – to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a conflict where information is treated as another battlefield.
    by Bill Chappell Mar 21, 2022 6 minutes
    Pedestrians cross a street in front of a billboard displaying the letter "Z" in the colors of the ribbon of St. George and a slogan: "We don't give up on our people," in support of the Russian armed forces, in St. Petersburg, on March 7.

    Russia's invasion of Ukraine has many of us using words and phrases we weren't before, from geopolitical terms like rump state to military lingo such as MANPADS.

    We're also learning to decipher slogans and spot differences between Russian and Ukrainian spellings amidst a conflict where information is treated as its own battlefield.

    Tracking surges in the words we use is part of linguist Grant Barrett's job. He is the co-host of A Way with Words, a public radio show about words and language, and a vice president of the American Dialect Society.

    "As a word watcher, we get a sense of the worries of the world," he told NPR.

    Barrett points out how the term Cold War has now been supplanted by the term "hot war" – a violent conflict with many of the worst burdens borne by civilians.

    With Barrett's help, NPR created a kind of war glossary, explaining some of the terms people are

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