I realize that I lean toward the morose, and have been proven a pessimist by my sports rooting behavior: I left the room in the final seconds before Larry Bird stole Isiah Thomas’ pass in 1987 to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, convinced the Pistons had defeated the Celtics.

To stay somewhat sane, I’ve trained myself to search for silver linings in the darkest of clouds, even if they are merely a hint of a suggestion of a possibility, just a faint glow in the midst of a towering, black, Dorothy-in-Kansas, storm cloud.

Since 2016 and the ascension of Donald Trump, my silver-linings search results have been meager. But with a possibly catastrophic storm just at the edge of town, I finally happened upon a small positive among powerful negatives: I’ve been constantly learning new words, or new meanings for old words, such as these:

FRAUGHT: For some months, it seemed every news headline contained this adjective. Derived from an Old English word for loading a ship, modern usage allows it as a standalone adjective (a “fraught discussion”) or modified using “with” (a “discussion fraught with acrimony”). As a separate adjective, it means “causing emotional distress or tension.” It seems our entire world is fraught, filled with uncertainty and distress: climate change that brings rising seas and hellish wildfires; unanswered questions about our jobs, health care, police protection, and needed social services; personal relationships with family and friends made tense and limited by deep political divisions.

I see our world as especially fraught in recent months by two factors that spill into every area of our lives: a stealthy, unpredictable virus that continues to infect, harm, and kill thousands each week; and a government that thrives on chaos and promotes conflict at every turn. I wish the word rolled more smoothly off my tongue, because it perfectly describes our lives that have few respites from emotional distress and tension.

UNCONSCIONABLE: Certainly, this is a word easily understood as “not guided or controlled by conscience” with “conscience” alluding to moral and ethical standards of right and wrong. Used sparingly in previous years, we have recently been bombarded by acts easily described as “unconscionable:” personal attacks on war heroes and Gold Star families; abandoning Iraqi interpreters and local allies in the Middle East; forcibly separating children from their families and holding them in cages as a deterrent to illegal immigration; seeking to end the DACA program, which protects immigrant children who have been outstanding citizens for years after they were brought to the U.S. by their parents; rushing through a Supreme Court nominee after blocking the lawful appointment process of Democrats in 2016. Any definition of “unconscionable” should include a picture of Lindsey Graham who encouraged people to “use my words against me” if he supported filling a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year. But, if a person has no conscience, his previous words fall on deaf ears-his own and his supporters’.

ORIGINALIST: Most of us aren’t burdened with understanding the arcane language related to Constitutional law. But the new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett used this term, made popular by Justice Scalia, to rationalize probable votes against any number of government social programs and regulations that don’t fit her extreme, right wing views. She sees the Constitution as a near-sacred document that has “the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. . . . It does not change over time, and it is not up to me to update it.”

The contradictions in such a stance are overwhelming. An article by Kent Greenfield of BC College of Law notes that Article I of the Constitution expressly authorizes Congress to establish “armies” and a “Navy.” But there is no mention of an Air Force, since planes weren’t even imagined at the time. Should the Air Force be disbanded as unconstitutional? The Constitution clearly establishes racist and sexist policies in its voting rules. Should those be reinstated since the meaning was clear at the time? What about corporations enjoying free speech through unlimited political donations, when corporations weren’t part of the economy for years to come? Interpreting and updating the Constitution is what the Supreme Court is all about, even if “originalists” want to use the theory for just a few issues to advance their agenda.

Learning these new words is a flimsy silver lining in a dense black cloud. We are fraught with uncertainty, aware of unconscionable actions, with a Constitution threatened by far-right originalists.

Allen Woods is a freelance writer and author living in Greenfield. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.