As we all know, 2020 has been an interesting year. And this year's "Word of the Year" by Merriam-Webster is even further proof.
The famous publishing company's 2020 Word of the Year is none other than: Pandemic.
It's not entirely surprising that "pandemic" would be selected this year... as it is clearly the one thing that every single person in the world has experienced or heard about non-stop since the beginning of this year. But the company explained their choice as well:
“Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it’s fitting that in this exceptional–and exceptionally difficult—year, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our Word of the Year will be."
In fact, Merriam-Webster said searches for “pandemic” picked up a lot starting on Jan. 20 and the searches spiked in early February, when the United States’ first coronavirus patient was released from the hospital.
Of course it wasn't until March when lockdowns went into place and COVID became more wide-spread, but throughout the entirety of 2020, the pandemic has certainly been on our minds.
The number of searches for 'pandemic' continued to grow through February and really increased on March 11th, when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In fact, on March 11th, there was an 115,806 percent increase in lookups compared to the same day in 2019.
So how exactly does Merriam-Webster define 'pandemic' in their dictionaries?
Pandemic: an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.
Yep. Sounds about right.
Another historic moment for the dictionary this year was the addition of COVID-19 as a word. COVID-19 was first used in February, and the company had a dictionary definition up 34 days later, making it the shortest period of time that Merriam-Webster has ever seen a word go from coinage to entry.
Let's hope the word for next year is a bit more positive... and something that sees a lot more of us out and about and hugging out loved ones.
What would your personal word of the year be?? Leave me a Yap!
Get more from Sisanie here!
Photo: Getty Images