Merriam-Webster announced on Monday “Pandemic” as 2020’s word of the year.
“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,” the organization posted on its website.
According to the site, its digital dictionary saw a more than 1,600% increase in searches for “pandemic” on Feb. 3, 2020 – the day the first COVID-19 patient in the U.S. was released from the Seattle hospital.
“People were clearly paying attention to the news and to early descriptions of the nature of this disease,” they said. “That initial February spike in lookups didn’t fall off – it grew. By early March, the word was being looked up an average of 4,000% over 2019 levels. As news coverage continued, alarm among the public was rising.”
Other words making Merriam-Webster’s top list include:
- Coronavirus
- Defund
- Mamba
- Kraken
- Quarantine
- Antebellum
- Schadenfreude
- Asymptomatic
- Irregardless
- Icon
- Malarkey
When the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic, on March 11, “pandemic” saw an increase of 115,806% in lookups.
“ … it has remained high in our lookups ever since, staying near the top of our word list for the past ten months—even as searches for other related terms, such as coronavirus and COVID-19, have waned.”
Pandemic as defined in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary:
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
SOURCE Merriam-Webster
