When in 1976 Raymond williams published his famous book, Keywords, Genocide was not among the discussed terms. Neither was Holocaust nor human rights, though he did include an entry on ‘humanity’. The subtitle indicated his remit: ‘A Vocabulary of Culture and Society’. A Marxist charting the transformations of western societies wrought by capitalism, Williams was interested in the historical semantics of words like class and art, industry and democracy that registered the unfolding and effects of European modernity. His book was, accordingly, not only Eurocentric, but western Eurocentric, reflecting the experience of that part of the world over the last two centuries. The fact that Williams, born in 1921 and a veteran of the Second World War, did not include the words that many today regard as central for articulating our experience—words which come out of that war—points not only to the rapid transitions in keyword shelf life but also to the particularity of experience.