Dictionary companies choose same word of the year: pandemic
In this Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020, photo taken through a camera lens the word "pandemic" in seen in a dictionary in Washington. Dictionary.com declared pandemic its 2020 word of the year. For the first time, two dictionary companies on Monday โ Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com โ declared the same word as their tops: pandemic. โOften the big news story has a technical word thatโs associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general. The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for โuniversalโ and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.
โPandemicโ picked as 2020 word of the year by Dictionary.com
Over time, we were pandemic baking and pandemic dating and rescuing pandemic puppies from shelters. All of which led Dictionary.com on Monday to declare โpandemicโ its 2020 word of the year. For about half the year, it was in the top 10% of all our lookups.โAnother dictionary, Merriam-Webster, also selected pandemic as its word of the year earlier Monday. Kelly said pandemic beat out routine lookups usually intended to sort more mundane matters, such as the differences between โto, two and too.โโThat's significant,โ Kelly emphasized. The pandemic as an event created a new language for a new normal.โLexicographers often factor out routine lookups when evaluating word trends.
Dictionary.com picks 'pandemic' as its 2020 word of the year
Over time, we were pandemic baking and pandemic dating and rescuing pandemic puppies from shelters. All of which led Dictionary.com on Monday to declare โpandemicโ its 2020 word of the year. For about half the year, it was in the top 10% of all our lookups.โAnother dictionary, Merriam-Webster, also selected pandemic as its word of the year earlier Monday. Kelly said pandemic beat out routine lookups usually intended to sort more mundane matters, such as the differences between โto, two and too.โโThat's significant,โ Kelly emphasized. The pandemic as an event created a new language for a new normal.โLexicographers often factor out routine lookups when evaluating word trends.