'Pandemic’ Declared as Word of the Year This 2020 by Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster chose its word of the year for 2020 and it's not a shocker: "pandemic."
The word "pandemic" had been used heavily this year, so various dictionaries picking it as the word of the years didn't surprise many.
Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski also told The Associated Press that the news likely "isn't a big shock" even though the word is quite technical in nature.
"Often the big news story has a technical word that's associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general," Sokolowski said.
The word of the year will likely be how many people will describe the year 2020 in the future after all, he said.
"Sometimes a single word defines an era," Merriam-Webster said in its announcement online. "[I]t's fitting that in this exceptional -- and exceptionally difficult -- year, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our Word of the Year will be."
Pandemic is not a new word, and actually dates back to centuries ago.
"Pandemic" Word Usage Spiked in Early 2020
The word became widely used after March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic.
Sokolowski said there was an increase of 115,806% in searches for the word compared to the same time last year.
But increased curiosity over the word's meaning came before that because the word started trending upwards as early as January.
According to a report from ABC News, the publishing company recognized that there was a big spike of looking up the word's meaning in February.
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In particular, the word search spiked when the first COVID-19 patient was released from a Seattle hospital on February 3 and on later dates when more deaths and outbreaks started occurring.
Merriam-Webster reported a 1,621% increase of the word's usage compared to the same time last year.
Dictionary.com also chose "pandemic" as its word of the year, said a report from Learning English Voice of America.
Some Runners Up for Word of The Year Also Pandemic Related
There were several other words in close competition as word of the year, and most were related to the word "pandemic."
Some examples of those words were coronavirus and quarantine.
Solowski said the upward trend in searching for the word likely isn't because people didn't know what the word mean. Some people just wanted to look for more details, inspiration or comfort.
He pointed out that the same set of words was looked up in time for Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving.
COVID-19 was Fastest Word to Go from Coinage to Entry
Dictionaries acted quickly to put the pandemic related words as new entries on their sites.
Even though the word "coronavirus" has been around for years, "COVID-19" was only coined in February.
Only 34 days since the word was coined, it was up on dictionaries because of the "urgency" it demanded, said Solowski.
It was the shortest time frame for which a word moved from coinage to becoming a dictionary entry, he added.
Asymptomatic, mamba, kraken, defund, antebellum, irregardless, icon, schadenfreude and malarkey were also some of the other most searched words with spikes around specific events.