The Merriam-Webster American Dictionary of English has chosen “pandemic” as the top word of the year. This is reported on the site of the organization.
The compilers of the dictionary emphasized that a “pandemic” is defined as an outbreak of a disease that occurs in several countries or continents, and usually affects a large part of the population. “It is appropriate that in this exceptional – including extremely difficult – year, this word immediately came to the fore,” the message says. Merriam-Webster clarified that the word came into use on March 11, when the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic.
Coronavirus, quarantine and asymptomatic are also included in the top 11 words named as the main ones in 2020. “Coronavirus” (“coronavirus”), “quarantine” (“quarantine”) and “asymptomatic” (“asymptomatic”). Describing the popularity of the word “coronavirus”, the authors noted that it is extremely rare for special medical terms to be so tightly included in the everyday vocabulary. Dictionary users also frequently searched for the words “defund” (“cut funding”), “Mamba” (“Mamba”), “Kraken” (“Kraken”), “antebellum” (“pre-war”), “schadenfreude” (“schadenfreude”) ), “irregardless”, “icon” and “malarkey”.
Merriam-Webster is published by a company of the same name, the original version of the dictionary was published in 1828. In particular, it was the first to point out the differences between the American and British languages.
In 2019, the word of the year according to Merriam-Webster it turned out ” “(they), which acts as a pronoun for people with a non-binary gender identity. In 2018, the drafters chose the word “justice”, in 2017 – “feminism”.