‘Vax’ triumphs in another year of Covid speak

Abit like Liverpool’s long wait to win another league title, the word ‘vax’ has been chosen as word of the year, several decades after it was first coined. The title has been bestowed by lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary, who must have been pretty confident in their choice, to kill off the game by the end of October.

It joins previous winners including ‘selfie’, ‘vape’, ‘toxic’ and 2017s ‘youthquake’, a word I’ve never actually heard in conversation or seen used by anyone who wasn’t a fan of Jeremy Corbyn.

‘Vax’ was reportedly helped - in another year dominated by the language of Covid-19 - by variants like doublevaxxed, unvaxxed and anti-vaxxer.

‘Lockdown’ - a joint winner last year when an individual champion proved impossible to identify - put up a dogged defence of its title but two years running was always going to be a big ask.

Oxford English

Dictionary senior editor

Fiona Mcpherson said vax had made the most striking impact, telling the BBC: “It goes back at least to the 1980s but according to our corpus it was rarely used until this year.”

It shows the value of playing the long game.

If the word ‘vax’ was a person, it would be boring us all about its

‘journey’ and inspiring the next generation of late-flowering buzzwords.

Vax has apparently formed an unprecedented alliance with a previous winner, ‘selfie’ from 2013, which marked a breakthrough year for social media vanity. Oxford lists the noun ‘vaxxie’, defined as follows: “A photograph of oneself taking during or immediately before or after a vaccination, especially one against Covid-19 and typically shared on social media.”

Presumably one can also take a grumpy looking ‘anti-vaxxie’ outside a vaccination centre - with optional placard - to share on social media along with several hundred words of rambling, unproven conspiracy.

‘Lockdown’ a joint winner last year - put up a dogged defence of its title but two years running was always going to be a big ask