Every year around this time, the dictionaries come out with their “Word of the Year.” I’m always interested to see what word gets the honor every year. I remember a couple of years ago, the Word of the Year wasn’t even a “word.” It was an emoji. That just seemed wrong to me, but then I often don’t agree with the choice(s) for the Word of the Year.
This year, for the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen not to name a word of the year. They stated that 2020 turned out to be a year that cannot be neatly accommodated in one single “word.” This year the Oxford English Dictionary decided to announce its “words of an ‘unprecedented’ year.” Last week, the dictionary said that there were just too many words to sum up the events of 2020. It’s kind of ironic that in a year that left us speechless, the Oxford Dictionary couldn’t come up with a Word of the Year.
However, all is not lost — on Monday, Merriam-Webster did come up with their word of the year — “pandemic.” According to the company, the first big spike for people looking up the word “pandemic” happened on February 3 — the same day that the first COVID-19 patient was released from a Seattle hospital. Searches for the word increased by 1,621% compared to the same time the year before. But the largest spike in searches for the word “pandemic” happened on March 11 when the World Health Organization officially declared “COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.” The increase on that day was 115,806% higher than on the same day in 2019.
I’m not sure that I’d have chosen pandemic for the word of the year, but I guess I have to agree it’s appropriate — from the Greek roots of the word, pan means ‘all’ or ‘every,’ and dēmos means ‘people.’ It’s literal meaning is ‘of all the people,’ The related word epidemic comes from roots that mean ‘on or upon the people.’ The two words are used in ways that overlap, but in general usage a pandemic is an epidemic that has escalated to affect a large area and/or population.
The Word of the Year usually defines an era, or something that a particular year is known or remembered for…. in 2008 “bailout” was the Word of the Year, in 2016, it was “surreal.”
So pandemic is probably not a bad choice — I’m not sure I’d have picked it over something like whew, ugh or Yecch.
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