Word(s) of the year (2020)
The website Lexico (powered by Oxford) has proclaimed the word quarantine the word of the year 2020, because “The word quarantine has stood at the centre of the profound ways Covid 19 changed society and language in 2020.”
The word quarantine is an excellent example of how scientific terms popped up as indispensable in our daily lives, terms such as asymptomatic, contact tracing, herd immunity, R number, social distancing, and super spreading.
Initially isolation was self-imposed, which led to a sharp rise of the terms self-isolation and self-quarantine, conveying ‘remaining apart from others for a period of time in order to avoid the transmission of an infectious disease.’ Gradually quarantine started to take on the form of a verb without an object: “After coming back from our holidays we had to quarantine.” This verb sense of quarantine along with other updates from Oxford Languages are being added to Lexico of 2021.
Many other terms have been coined to convey containment: hunker down, lockdown, self-isolation and stay at home to mention just a few.
Fortunately many people have stayed resilient and kept their sense of humour in spite of these hard times and have come up with new word combinations based on e.g. quarantine, Corona, and COVID-19 and many other words. Would you have had a clue what these words meant a year ago?
Elbow bump - a safe way to greet another person
Maske - an acne outbreak caused by facial coverings
Zoombombing - when strangers intrude on video conferences
Doomscrolling -when you skim anxiety-inducing pandemic-related stories on a device
Quarantini - cocktails made/consumed in isolation
Quaranteams - pod or bubbles kept small and exclusive to contain the spread of contagious disease
Quaranteens - the next generation of teenagers conceived during the pandemic
Quaz/quazza - Australian English for quarantine
Coronacut -quarantine haircut
Covidiot -used in the derogatory manner towards someone for disobeying Covid 19 safety guidelines
Contact tracer, frontliner, physical distancing, shield and R number are also new entries from the coronavirus update. New senses (meanings) of existing words also had to be reviewed, e.g. front line, remotely and shield. These new meanings have become so familiar that I doubt they need any further explanation. [If they do, go to: https://www.lexico.com/explore/word-of-the-year ]. This is where you will find the original article and many other features of interest regarding the English language. Many more updates will be added to Lexico in 2021.
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