Today’s word of the day, thanks to Words Coach, is volatile. Volatile is an adjective that means several different things:

1. evaporating rapidly; passing off readily in the form of vapor:
2. tending or threatening to break out into open violence; explosive:
3. changeable; mercurial; flighty:
4. of prices, values, etc.) tending to fluctuate sharply and regularly:
5. fleeting; transient:
6. omputers. of or relating to storage that does not retain data when electrical power is turned off or fails.
7. able to fly or flying. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/volatile).

Dictionary.com also has a definition for volatile as a noun, but that nominal is really just a substantive adjective. The pronunciation is / ˈvɒl ə tl, -tɪl or, especially British, -ˌtaɪl /. While the website says that the third choice is “especially British,” I have heard lots of Americans say it that way.

Merriam-Webster says of the word, “Volatile was originally for the birds—quite literally. Back in the 14th century, the word was a noun and volatiles were birds (especially wild fowl) or other winged creatures, such as butterflies. That’s not as flighty as it sounds. Volatile traces back to the Latin verb volare, which means ‘to fly.’ By the end of the 16th century, people were using volatile as an adjective to describe meal ground so fine and light that it could easily ‘fly’ or be blown about. Soon after, the adjective was extended to creatures that were capable of flying (as in ‘volatile insects’), later to vapors and gases, and by the early 17th century, to individuals or things as prone to sudden change as some gaseous substances” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volatile). So according to M-W, volatile underwent zero derivation as well as semantic drift.

Etymonline.com basically agrees with M-W, saying that the word as we have it appears in English in the “1590s ‘fine or light;’ also, of substances, ‘evaporating rapidly, susceptible to diffusion;’ from French volatile, from Latin volatilis ‘fleeting, not lasting, transitory; swift, rapid; flying, winged,’ from past-participle stem of volare ‘to fly’ (see volant). The sense of ‘readily changing, flighty, fickle’ is attested from 1640s. In reference to stocks or markets, by 1931. Also ‘flying, able to take flight’ (1620s), and generally, ‘having the quality of taking flight, evanescent’ (1660s). Volatiles (c. 1300) in Middle English were ‘birds, butterflies, and other winged creatures’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=volatile).

It is, perhaps, coincidental that Etymonline mentions that volatile can be used in reference to stocks or markets because on this date in 1962, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 5.7%, “in what was termed the ‘Flash Crash of 1962’” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Slide_of_1962).

After the end of World War 2, the world’s economy was pretty much devastated, as one might expect. The annual debt of the United States government during the war had been 40% of GDP because so much spending went into building arms and paying soldiers. Immediately after the war, Europe was particularly badly off, and a number of programs were initiated, including the Marshall Plan, which provided Europe with the equivalent of $140 billion (https://worldhistoryjournal.com/2025/03/30/the-financial-impacts-of-world-war-ii-on-the-global-economy/).

Then, starting in about 1950, an economic and industrial boom started the included not only the United States and its allies but the Axis powers and countries that had hardly been involved in the war at all. This period is called by some the Golden Age of Capitalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion). “OECD members enjoyed real GDP growth averaging over 4% per year in the 1950s, and nearly 5% per year in the 1960s, compared with 3% in the 1970s and 2% in the 1980s” (ibid.).

But even though the expansion continued into the 1970s, there was that hiccup: “From February 1951 to December 1959, the real GDP of the United States had risen significantly. Stock prices had been on a steady rise since the late 1940s, and when John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he promised that the recovery would continue. After continuing to rise through December 1961, however, the stock market experienced a massive decline. Through June 1962, the S&P 500 experienced a 22.5% decline” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Slide_of_1962).

Life magazine reported, “The signs, like the rumblings of an Alpine ice pack at the time of thaw, had been heard. The glacial heights of the stock boom suddenly began to melt in a thaw of sell-off. More and more stocks went up for sale, with fewer and fewer takers at the asking price. Then suddenly, around lunchtime on Monday, May 28, the sell-off swelled to an avalanche. In one frenzied day in brokerage houses and stock exchanges across the U.S., stock values glamor and blue-chip alike took their sharpest drop since 1929.

“Memory of the great crash, and the depression that followed, has haunted America’s subconscious. Now, after all these years, was that nightmare to happen again?” (https://www.life.com/history/market-woes-remembering-the-flash-crash-of-1962/).

Let me put that into context. Much has been made in the news in the United States about the stock market since Donald Trump became president on January 20, 2025. On February 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached $44,873.28. On April 7, the DJIA bottomed out at $37,645.59. That was a plunge of about 16%. Had the market dropped 22% as it did during the Kennedy Flash Crash, it would have dropped to $35,001. Fortunately, just as the market has recovered to nearly where it was in early February, the market also recovered, especially in July and November of that year.

If you’re in the stock market or thinking about getting into the stock market, you might want to consider some advice from Forbes: “Overall, investing is all about focusing on your financial goals and ignoring the busybody nature of the markets and the media that covers them. That means buying and holding for the long haul, regardless of any news that might move you to try and time the market” (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/tips-for-long-term-investing/). The stock market may appear volatile at times, but in the long term, it’s generally pretty steady.

The image today is of the “HERALD EXAMINER, Los Angeles, May 28, 1962  The bold banner headline is one of the best we’ve seen on the stock market ‘flash crash’ of 1962,’” according to Timothy Hughes Rare and Early Newspapers (https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/610488).