"It's Covid Outside" - Mysterious Syntax of Weather Covid

I wanted to post about a novel construction I've noticed throughout all of last year, which is 'it's covid.' Perhaps you've seen it too? 'Covid' is behaving similarly to weather.

"I would have gone to the fabric store, but it's covid outside."

"We had to stop having parties because it's covid."

"It's the holiday time, but it's covid." "Because it's covid."

Look up "it's covid outside" on Twitter and you'll find a number of people using the expression unironically.

There have been people noting the weather-ness of COVID:

Moms in 2019: Don't forget your scarf it's cold outside.
Moms in 2020: Don't forget your mask, it's covid outside.
Source

We can easily replace all of these with weather words: "it's raining, it's sunny, it's snowing." Not all weather-related words are used in this way, though: "it's hailing" and "it's sleeting" do not sound natural, though they aren't ungrammatical.

"Covid" still doesn't take all the characteristics of a weather word, though. For one thing, although you can say "it's often sunny outside," you can't say *"it's often covid outside." It just sounds ungrammatical.

So "covid" is not behaving like an adjective, like "sunny." What about a verb? Let's compare "covid" constructions with other "Weather IT" constructions. Weather verbs behave specially with it.

• "It somestimes rains after snowing."
• *"It sometimes COVIDs after snowing."
• *"It sometimes rains after Covid/coviding."

Hmm, not that either. Much like how "covid" normally behaves, it seems like it's a noun. But if it's a noun, why can we say "it's covid outside"? We don't say *"it's volcano outside". "Covid" is taking on aspects of an adjective in being able to be modified by "outside." But it's not totally an adjective, because we can't say *"it's often covid outside."

I end with a question - what is going on with this construction? Are there similar ones out there (e.g. "It's orange fog outside")? A random search shows that there is a very rare form, "it's fire outside" for "there's a fire outside" (source).

Tiny Update

Hello, still here! And still quite occupied with stuff outside this blog. As a life tip, I strongly encourage you not to put more on your plate than you can handle. :) Frankly I doubt I shall be able to update again until April, but I will at least continue my monthly check-ins.

Blog Update - January 31

Hello! I have been quite busy this month, but I have always striven to update at least once a month, so here's a fun late night post for you all. Some details: I am currently working a full time job, have a side hustle, going back to college... and doing this blog! Alas, something had to give, so I could not serve you fun linguistics stuff this month. This doesn't mean I wasn't working, just that nothing was ready.

By the by, isn't the form 'striven' interesting? I recently read that in languages with complex derivational morphology, some forms simply don't show up. And yet, children know how to fill in the paradigms. I'm not sure a language even needs to be all that complex for it to happen. How often do you ever use 'strive' in a perfect sentence? How about 'stride,' what is its past participle? "I had strode" is okay, but what about "I had stridden"? There's even a word "had strid." When do you ever get the chance to say "having stridden around the room..."?

I hope you're all able to stay safe. If we are lucky, we are seeing the light at the end of this coronavirus tunnel. I have one (1) COVID-related post coming up that I hope to get out before we have all been vaccinated. :) Nothing too serious, just a fun little construction I've seen out and about.

I had originally hoped to make more videos of my articles, but this has really been slowing down some of my progress, so I will be putting that plan on hold. At the very least, they won't come out the same day my articles come out. I love video, but the written word is my first love.

One pandemic-related change I've made is deciding to significantly drop my social media usage. I simply felt I wasn't getting enough out of it for the time I put in, and nowadays my time is a relatively scarce resource. I will still post and do updates on the blog, but I'm less likely to make original tweets. You can still contact me through email or @ me on Twitter - it may take me some time, but I'll get back to you!

- Karen