Normalcy

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"A return to normalcy" was U.S. Presidential candidate Warren Harding’s campaign promise in the election of 1920.  Although the word was a neologism as well as a malapropism (see normality), coined by Harding, the implied concept apparently encapsulated what Americans wanted, since he was elected president over his Democratic opponent James Cox.

Normalcy has been defined by a historian (P. Massie) as "The good old days that never were."

[edit] External links

• "Normalcy" The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3th ed., edited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. http://www.bartleby.com/59/
• "Normalcy" - The Mavens' Word of the Day
• A Time for Normalcy by Evan Jenkins, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2002