Decoding Daesh: Why is the new name for ISIS so hard to understand?

That daesh is an Arabic word in its own right (rather than an acronym) meaning ‘a group of bigots who impose their will on others’

That it can be ‘differently conjugated’ to mean either the phrase above or ‘to trample and crush’

That one of the words in the acronym also means ‘to trample or crush’

That it is an insult or swearword in its own right

That is has different meanings in the plural form

In Arabic, acronyms are not anything like as widely used as they are in English, and so arabophones are not as used to hearing them as anglophones are

.. First of these is that both the shape of the word and the combination of letters in it are redolent of words from al-jahaliyya, the pre-Islamic dark ages or ‘age of ignorance’ that – as well as being a time rich in poetry and narrative heritage – has huge connotations of hideous barbarity in the popular imagination, being the realm of jinns and monsters and evil spirits and marauding freaks.

.. al-Haj Salih says his main goal in making a new name for Daesh was to avoid people getting used to referring to a tyrannical and despotic movement as a ‘state’.