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The year 2020 can’t be spelt in one word

Lockdown was named earlier this month as the word of the year by Collins Dictionary.

The year 2020 is indescribable. The enormity off the pandemic tragedy that struck the world has left us speechless. No wonder Oxford English Dictionary (OED) announced for the first time that it has chosen not to name one single word of the year, but many words for the “unprecedented” 2020. Previous choices for the word of the year from Oxford have included “climate emergency” and “post-truth”.

While lockdown was named earlier this month as the word of the year by Collins Dictionary, the linguists at Oxford seemed to have agreed that no one word can sum up the events witnessed in 2020. They announced that the vocabulary of the English-speaking world expanded with the pandemic, and led to an increased usage of words like social distancing, infodemic, maskless, self-quarantine, and stay-at-home, among other words.

The usage of the word “pandemic” itself increased by more than 57,000 per cent this year. Other than the coronavirus-related vocabulary, words like black lives matter, Juneteenth, and bushfires, too had an impact on the society and the language, and are hence a part of the list. Experts suggested that it is indeed ironic that while the year has left us speechless with its surprises and shocks, the language amassed a new collective vocabulary. “I’ve never witnessed a year in a language like the one we’ve just had,” said Oxford Dictionaries president Casper Grathwohl.