In our interconnected world, the ability of individuals to influence the thinking of others on a global scale has probably never been greater. Being retweeted by somebody with a huge number of followers can be an enormous boost, while the ability to spread fake news and therefore influence the views of countless others is a power which has never existed before.

Interesting then that this week, I have come across a lot of new or unfamiliar words which focus on people or things which strongly influence us.

The Guardian in particular has been leading the way. In one piece, it described the growing trend for people such as Marie Kondo to go online or on TV to try to make others tidy up their homes. It describes them as Cleanfluencers. The article certainly picks up on a new trend, and at this stage, I am only finding the term online referencing the Guardian piece, but I may be wrong, so if anyone can find an earlier citation, please let me know.

This definitely ticks the box of being a new word arriving to fill a semantic gap. But in my opinion, it’s a terrible word, being neither easy to say nor particularly clear in its meaning when you first see it. I hope it doesn’t catch on, but I fear that now that it is being used, it will clean up.

Those with enormous social media followings are regarded as major influencers. On the flip side, I also read about Nano Influencers, who are people with much smaller social media followings but who nonetheless have the power to influence people’s views on emerging products. The suggestion of how to work with these creative souls is to harness the power of hundreds of Nano Influencers simultaneously and use their output to help to drive your brand. One Marie Kondo = 100 Nano Influencers.

Hardly surprisingly, it turns out The Guardian wrote about Nano Influencers as well last year. Is there an influential trend that The Guardian doesn’t want to influence you to think about?

Not content with the influence of people, the Guardian also turned to influence of alcohol and write about Hangxiety, the sense of guilt and stress that often accompanies drinking too much, allied to the hangover which follows. Its lengthy article on the subject looked at the chemical influence which alcohol has on the body and the reasons why the feelings of anxiety can be unavoidable.

The main feeling I had reading this was to be reminded of Hangry, an increasingly popular word which describes the combination of being hungry and angry and the feelings of rage which can sometimes accompany the need to eat. Again, there are documented scientific reasons for this phenomenon.

I’m no scientific researcher, so I cannot comment on the validity of the findings behind these two words. But as a linguist, I am hoping we are not at a trend of combining words beginning with A with words beginning with H to create an increasing range of peculiar portmanteau words. Meet my hairy friend Andrew, or Handrew as he likes to be known. If this carries on, I’m going to get really Haggravated.

One influence we can never escape is the weather. While the cold snap in the UK hasn’t been as harsh as predicted, the same cannot be said for the extraordinarily cold weather in the US, with the term Polar Vortex making one its irregular appearances on the front pages. Much more unusual were the reports of a Sun Dog, which is a rare phenonemon where the sun reflects off ice crystals in the atmosphere and there appear to be bright, sun-like spots flanking the sun as it rises. It’s almost like you get three suns for the price of one.

And while we’re at it with the things influencing our lives, we can never escape Brexit in the UK. My favourite contribution to the debate this week, from a linguistic viewpoint, was the report that a new verb ‘To Brexit’ had been coined in Russian, loosely defined as ‘To say goodbye but not to leave’. The kind of thing you might say if you were drunk and unable to leave the room. A case of being struck down by Hangxiety, perhaps.