‘Formicate’ is a word. You read that right. No, we’re not talking about ‘fornicate’, the more popular word and just one letter away. Not Bad Not Well drops the strange word in the lyrics to its latest single, the rock n roll burner “New Way Out”.

I’ve missed all those days in recovery

I’ve missed all our games getting high

I’ll formicate through it all

It’s only blood

And I think they’re coming for me

We’ll formicate through it all

‘Formicate’ with an ‘m’ is a verb that means “to crawl around like ants” or “to swarm with ants or other crawling things.” That’s a really fucking specific definition. It’s a ‘crawling’ or ‘swarming’ that specifies precisely the kind of crawler or swarmer you’re talking about.

The etymological root stems from ‘formica,’ which is Latin for ‘ant.’ Essentially, it’s just a verb to describe the sort of thing that ants do that humans find most salient. Crawl/swarm. It’s like saying ants ‘ant’, where ‘anting’ is a verb. But that sounds like nonsense talk, so we substitute in an anglicized variant of the Latin term, though it amounts to the same thing meaning-wise.

The use of the term ‘formicate’ reached its peak in the late 19th century and really fell off in the 20th. Is it merely a coincidence that modern pesticides took off around the same time that the use of ‘formicate’ started to decline?

A speculative connection, sure. But part of what words do is describe our world, and when the world changes, our lexicon changes. You don’t need words to describe the phenomenon of swarming ants if it's not a recurring part of your experience. In other news, the olden days were gross!

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