Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2020 is pandemic.
Collins
‘Lockdown’, the containment measure implemented by governments around the world to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, has been named the Collins Word of the Year 2020.
Oxford Dictionaries - Words of an unprecedented year
Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.
The language of Covid-19
Coronavirus, Covid-19, and related words
By March this year coronavirus was one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language
Pandemic and other -demics
An epidemic is a disease which is widespread in a community; a pandemic is one which has spread much more widely, across a whole country, multiple countries, or the whole world.
Social distancing, lockdown, and other measures
In March this year, as governments across the world introduced measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19, social distancing – along with the related verb socially distance and the adjective socially distanced – surged in frequency.
Masks and coverings
Mask-shaming is especially interesting as it is a contronym which has two opposite meanings
Epidemiological terms
Other terms which have become much more common this year in everyday discourse include flatten the curve and community transmission.
An important aspect of reducing transmission is eliminating superspreader events.
On the frontline
Other very significant words of the year are those relating to the medical response to Covid-19, including PPE (and its fuller form personal protective equipment) and ventilator. There has also been a recognition of medical staff and other workers providing an essential service, often referred to as key workers (especially in the UK), essential workers (especially in the US), or frontline workers.
World Englishes
Most lexical innovation happened this year as a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic
A particularly noteworthy example is circuit breaker, a term originally referring to a safety device that stops the flow of current in an electric circuit, and later also in widespread use as a piece of financial slang for a regulatory instrument designed to prevent panic selling by temporarily stopping trading on an exchange.
At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Southeast Asian word suddenly gained global prominence: wet market.
Faced with the challenges of providing face-to-face classroom teaching, the education sector in many countries turned to technology: e-learning has become a widely used term in Africa and Asia; in Southeast Asia, there has been much discussion on new learning modalities; and more widely blended learning which combines online with in-person instruction has seen a significant increase in usage.
Technology and remote working
The lockdown accelerated the move towards flexible, remote working
The environment
One of the defining climatic events of the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 was the Australian bushfire season, the worst on record. The word bushfire surged in frequency in January, and was one of the top keywords in our corpus that month.
In March this year, the frequency of climate, global warming, and related terms plummeted in our corpus.
Climate and related terms are becoming more frequent again, while net zero (another word on our 2019 Word of the Year shortlist, referring to a target of completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity) is also on the rise: the recent increase partly relates to the historic pledge made by President Xi Jinping in September, that China will be carbon neutral by 2060.
Social movements and social media
the term Black Lives Matter, and its abbreviation BLM, exploded in usage beginning in June of this year
there has been a surge in usage of D&I, an abbreviation of diversity and inclusion, as well as BIPOC, an abbreviation of black, indigenous, and other people of colour.
we noted increases in the term cancel culture, the culture of boycotting and withdrawing support from public figures whose words and actions are considered socially unacceptable, as well as the use of Karen as a generic name for a white woman who behaves in a stereotypically racist or discriminatory manner.
Politics and economics
impeachment was a hot topic, and was one of the keywords in our corpus in January when the trial to impeach Donald Trump began. Acquittal peaked in February at the conclusion of the trial.
Furlough was originally associated with members of the armed forces going on leave, and was chiefly used in the US. In March and April 2020 though, when it started to be used in other countries as employers were given grants to pay employees who were not working, usage shot up.
Elsewhere our language use highlights the story of the shocking economic impact of the crisis. Words showing significant increase in use include stimulus, unemployment, layoff, and eviction.