My word for 2020 is routine. Word of The Year 2021. Out of thousands of compelling submissions, one word rose to top. Both words have seen increase in usage, almost 500% and 380% respectively. The sports star who could afford just one meal a day. Watch your mouth. After you have chosen your word of the year 2021, it’s time to put it into practice. If there is no foundation, when the storms come, our lives will fall. Our team of expert lexicographers have captured and analysed this lexical data every step of the way. Throughout 2020, our team has been tracking a growing body of so-called coronacoinages that have given expression—and have offered some relief from tragedy, some connection in isolation—to the lived experience of a surreal year. What was crowned the People’s Choice 2020 Word of the Year? From a deadly pandemic to a global movement for racial justice, the year 2020 certainly experienced its fair share of world-shifting events. The Oxford English Dictionary also choose their own word of the year, opting for "climate emergency" in 2019, "toxic" in 2018, "youthquake" in 2017 and "post-truth" in 2016. From a global pandemic, protests and riots in parts of the United States, national and local elections, online learning and remote work, describing 2020 in just a word or two seems like a daunting task. And on its own, this evolving vernacular serves as a striking timeline of life under COVID-19. Do you know the meaning of other slang standouts in 2020, such as simp and stonks? Yet the news cycle is a fickle friend, and sometimes not even a friend. 2020 was a year unlike any other and a year that most people will be glad to see the end of. Get the facts with our articles on disinformation and QAnon. more. Boosted by growing user interest in the term, the prominence of superspreader, both literally and figuratively, prompted our editors to prioritize the word as a part of a second batch of COVID-19 updates to Dictionary.com this year. Starting as early as mid-September in several states, record numbers of people—with many donning face masks to stand in long, socially distanced lines—voted early or cast in-person absentee ballots. Oxford University Press said it used "evidence-based data" to explore this year's language developments. By July, Karen had logged over two million views on our site following a series of viral videos showing white women, popularly labeled Karens, flouting pandemic safety regulations or calling the police on Black people. Isn't now exactly the moment when we should be using Brexit more than ever? And just four days earlier on September 18, the country was rattled by the death of influential and iconic Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Superspreader is a word dating back to the 70s, the report said, but it spiked in October when coronavirus cases spread in the White House. Meanwhile, President Trump spread false information about mail-in voting and cast doubt on election integrity at the same time the Postal Service faced delivery days. At the start of 2020, it was unthinkable that parents would need to have a serious conversation about the word pandemic—a word which may have previously felt like a term from the history books—to their children around the dinner table. Everything will start with “twenty twenty ___.” The year of 2020 is the year of laying the foundation. Out of thousands of compelling submissions, one word rose to top. Given the wildly unexpected ride that the year 2020 turned out to be, there are a slew of words that shockingly rose to relevance. Americans voted, early and by mail like never before, in an impassioned presidential election. Use of “Black Lives Matter” and “BLM” also surged, as did the term “QAnon”, up by 5,716% on last year. What Makes African American Vernacular English Distinct And Complex, Deepen Your Understanding Of Black History With These 10 Essential Terms, Pisces People: These Words Are All About You. Committee's Choice Macquarie Dictionary COVID Word of the Year 2020: rona And for our second Word of the Year for 2020, we have selected rona, a shortening of coronavirus a.k.a. How rare it is for the origin of a word—with pandemic ultimately coming from the Greek pân, “all,” and dêmos, “people”—to prove so literal. As voting in this passionate election got underway, lookups leaped for absentee vote, increasing 7,700% on September 22. VideoThe sports star who could afford just one meal a day, 'How I scammed women on dating apps while in jail', Why Finland is holding a war crimes trial in Liberia, The 'colourful' lives lost to Covid. Have an inspirational word chosen for you at random! What is YOUR word of the year? In addition to shortened forms like rona and quar, we saw a slew of puns, blends, novel expressions, and other new words for a new normal. less, In a year when facts about COVID-19 had life-and-death consequences, 2020 also saw the troubling spread of conspiracy theories—including from the highest office in the land. While some erupted into violent clashes with police and counter-protestors, demonstrations were largely safe and peaceful, and spurred a reckoning with deep-seated racial inequality in the U.S. All of this flux was reflected in search data and user interest on Dictionary.com. These word lists started in 2003 and have been published at the end of each year. Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. Find out why—and learn its counterpart in Spanish while you do. Some serious synonyms for pettifogging await on Thesaurus.com. Notable in this set was defund, whose use in the slogan Defund the Police became a rallying cry for many protestors—and a lightning rod for backlash against them. Why Dictionary.com Chose This Word To Describe 2020. more. less, In 2020, the slang insult Karen went from an internet meme to a cultural touchstone of the year. The pandemic has wreaked social and economic disruption on a historic scale and scope, globally impacting every sector of society—not to mention its emotional and psychological toll. To ensure people could vote safely amid a pandemic, many states broadened qualifications around absentee voting. Based upon a statistical analysis of words that are looked up in extremely high numbers in our online dictionary while also showing a significant year-over-year increase in traffic, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2020 is pandemic. 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