Not surprisingly, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year: ‘pandemic’



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NEW YORK – If you had to pick one word that has surpassed the most in 2020, what word would it be?

Ding, ding, ding: Merriam-Webster on Monday announced “pandemic” as her word of the year 2020.

“It’s probably not a big shock,” Peter Sokolowski, editor-in-chief of Merriam-Webster, told The Associated Press.

“Often the great story has a technical word associated with it and in this case the word pandemic is not only technical but has become general. This is probably the word by which we will refer to this period in the future, ”he said.

The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was labeled a pandemic, but it began to rise on Merriam-Webster.com in early January and again in February when the first deaths and outbreaks in the United States on cruise ships have happened.

On March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, searches of the site for the pandemic increased significantly. The site’s interest in the word remained very high throughout the year, Sokolowski said.

Basically, Sokolowski means that searches for the pandemic on March 11 were 115,806% higher than searches on the same date last year.

Pandemic, whose roots are Latin and Greek, is a combination of “pan”, for all, and “demos”, for people or the population. The latter is the same root of “democracy,” Sokolowski noted. The word pandemic dates back to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to refer to disease in a medical text from the 1660s, he said.

It was after the plagues of the Middle Ages, Sokolowski said.

He attributes the research traffic for the pandemic not entirely to researchers who were unsure of what it meant, but also to those looking for more details, or for inspiration or comfort.

“We see that the word love is searched around on Valentine’s Day and the word cornucopia is searched on Thanksgiving,” Sokolowski said. “We see a word as a surreal peak when a moment of national tragedy or shock occurs. It is the idea that dictionaries are the start of getting your thoughts in order. “

Merriam-Webster moved quickly in March to add and update entries on her site for words related to the pandemic. While “coronavirus” had been in the dictionary for decades, “COVID-19” was coined in February. Thirty-four days later, Merriam-Webster posted it, along with a few dozen other entries that have been revised to reflect the health emergency.

“This is the shortest period we have ever seen moving from currency to entry,” Sokolowski said. “The word had this urgency.”

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Coronavirus was among the word of the year finalists as it moved into the mainstream. Quarantine, asymptomatic, mamba, kraken, defund, antebellum, irregardless, icon, schadenfreude, and malarkey were also finalists based on peaks of research around specific events.

Forties is especially appealing to word nerds like Sokolowski, a lexicographer. With Italian roots, it was used during the Black Death of the 1300s when a new ship entering port would have to wait outside a town to avoid disease. The quarantined “quar” derives from 40, for the required 40 days.

Spikes for mamba came after the January death of Kobe Bryant, whose nickname was the Black Mamba. Much research took place for kraken in July after the new Seattle National Hockey League franchise chose the mythical sea monster as its name, encouraged by fans.

Country group Lady Antebellum’s name change to Lady A sparked dictionary interest in June, while malarkey received a boost from President-elect Joe Biden, who likes to use the word. Icon was at the center of the headlines after the deaths of US Representative John Lewis and US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

The Merriam-Webster site has approximately 40 million unique users per month and approximately 100 million page views per month.

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