Oxford’s 2020 Word of Year? It’s unprecedented

Oxford Languages’ annual Word of the Year is usually a tribute to the protean creativit y of English and the reality of constant linguistic change, throwing a spotl i ght on zeitgei st y neolo - gisms like “selfie,” “vape” and “unfriend.”

But then came 2020 and you- know- what.

Thi s year, Oxford L anguages, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has forgone the selection of a single word in favor of highlighting the coronavirus pandemic’s swift and sudden linguistic effect on English.

The Word of the Year i s based on usage evidence drawn from Oxford’s continually updated corpus of more than 11 billion words, gathered from news sources across the English- speaking world. The selection is meant “to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations” of the preceding year, while also having “lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.”

The 2020 report does highlight some zippy new coinages, like “Blursday” ( which captures the way the week blends together), “covidiots” ( you know who you are) and “doomscrolling” ( who, me?). But mostly, it underlines how the pandemic has utterly dominated public conversation and given us a new collective vocabulary almost overnight.

T h e p a n d e mi c t u r n e d once- obscure public- health t e r minol o g y l i ke “s o c i a l d i s t a n c i n g ” o r “f l a t t e n the curve” into household terms and made words and phrases like “lockdown” and “st ay- at- home” common. More subtly, it also altered usage patterns for ho- hum words l i ke “remote” and “remotely.”