The Covid-19 pandemic has authoritatively defined 2020.
UK-based Collins Dictionary has reported “lockdown” as its word of the year, with other pandemic related words not far behind.
Defined as “the inconvenience of severe limitations on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces,” the thing was one of six words in the word dictionary’s best ten of 2020 that identified with the deadly bug.
Covid-19 was obviously on the list, registering a staggering 35,000-fold increase being used over the earlier year.
Other related words include: social distancing, self-isolation, key workers and furlough.
Last year, Collins, which tracks a 4.5 billion word corpus, chose “climate strike” as the word of year.
