Far too many words to be singled out ‘in year that left us speechless’
Many of us may struggle to find the words to capture the events of 2020. Yet as people across the globe have swiftly adapted to meet the ever evolving demands of the year, so too has our language. Words that meant nothing to us 12 months ago are now part of our everyday lexicon.
In its latest trawl for
Word of the Year, the team at Oxford Languages was swamped with options. It became clear 2020 could not be accommodated in one single word, writes Fiona Evans.
Instead they plumped to document more expansively “the phenomenal breadth of language change and development” during the year.
From ‘allyship’ to ‘Zoombombing’ (could it be anything else) the Words of an Unprecedented Year report offers an insight into the unfolding story of these exceptional times.
In years to come, the report will no doubt be poured over by linguists and historians, as a rich mine of vocabulary that has come to prominence during this year.
But for today it holds up a mirror to English speakers around the world and their response to the tumultuous events of 2020.
“I’ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we’ve just had,” said Oxford Dictionaries president Casper Grathwohl. “The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time.
“It’s both unprecedented and a little ironic – in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other.”
Previously, the Oxford Word of the Year has been selected as a word or expression shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations of the past 12 months and to have potential as a term of lasting cultural significance.
“The English language, like all of us, has had to adapt rapidly and repeatedly this year,” notes the report. “Given the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during 2020, Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.”
Unsurprisingly COVID-19 – that the report tells us was coined in February and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in April – and all its related vocabulary provided a clear focus for language monitoring this year.
Similarly ‘furlough,’ ‘selfisolate,’ ‘bubbles,’ ‘covidiot’ and ‘lockdown’ are now all part of our daily frame of reference.
But there were, it turns out, other areas of activity that saw “enormous language change” such as political and economic volatility, social activism, the environment and rapid uptake of new technologies and behaviours to support remote working and living.
Last year, the Oxford Languages Word of the Year was ‘climate emergency’, with a shortlist consisting of words relating to climate and environmental issues.
All the way back at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, saw the worst Australian bushfire season on record.
The word ‘bushfire’ surged in frequency in January.
Arguably climate change may have received less media coverage than in previous years because of the pandemic.
However, precisely because of COVID-19, we have seen the introduction of a new word, ‘anthropause’, referring to the global slowdown of travel and other human activity and the subsequent welcome consequences, such as a decrease in light and noise pollution.
Linked to a reduction in travel is the ‘staycation’ – a holiday spent at home or in
our home country.
The word was first recorded in 1944 in the Oxford English Dictionary but its frequency has increased by almost 380 per cent this year compared to last, and there is also growing evidence of its use as a verb.
Despite our inability to gather in large numbers in 2020, the year saw a surge in demonstrations and activism that is reflected in our language.
In June ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the abbreviated BLM surged in usage and have remained high since.
Use of ‘conspiracy theory’ has almost doubled between October 2019 and October 2020 and use of the term ‘QAnon’ has increased by a massive 960 per cent over the same period.
But there is no escaping that this year will be remembered in so many ways – including linguistically – for
the pandemic and all that it brought.
The word ‘furlough’ was originally associated with members of the armed forces going on leave and was mainly used in the US.
But in March and April 2020, when it gained traction in other countries as employers were given grants to pay employees who were not working, usage shot up. Dating back to the 1960s ‘coronavirus’ was previously mainly used by scientific and medical specialists but by April 2020 it had become one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language, exceeding even the usage of the word ‘time’. By May it had been surpassed by ‘COVID-19’.
The arrival of the ‘pandemic’ (a word which has seen usage increase by more than 57,000 per cent this year) has undoubtedly
brought with it a language of its own, revitalizing existing words and introducing us to new ones.
Depending on where you are in the world, you may have experienced a ‘circuit breaker,’ ‘lockdown’ or have been asked to ‘shelter-inplace’, all words that saw huge increases in usage from March. Many of us formed support ‘bubbles’ or ‘pods’ and started to wear ‘face masks’ or ‘face coverings’ while becoming familiar with calling medics, delivery drivers and supermarket staff ‘key workers’ as well as ‘frontliners’ and ‘essential workers’.
The pandemic has also sparked a revolution in our working habits. Two words that have seen more than a 300 per cent usage growth since March are ‘remote’ and ‘remotely’.
Got a meeting? Best en
sure you are not on ‘mute’. Along with ‘unmute’ this has seen a significant rise in usage this year. The report states that the use of the word ‘unprecedented’ soared.
“But what’s exceptional in our own lived experience often has parallels in history. The English language is studded with words from previous plagues and pandemics, mass social disruption and an abundance of expressions that fulfil humanity’s perennial need to describe an often inhospitable world,” it tells us.
“Though what was genuinely unprecedented this year was the hyper-speed at which the English-speaking world amassed a new collective vocabulary relating to the coronavirus, and how quickly it became, in many instances, a core part of the language.”