COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, Superspreader: Oxford names 2020 words of the year, saying this year cannot be – MassLive.com

Oxford Languages named a whole list of words as Word of the Year this year, calling it words of an unprecedented year.

The English language, like all of us, has had to adapt rapidly and repeatedly this year, Oxford Languages state. Given the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during 2020, Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.

The words include COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, superspreader, mail-in, cancel culture and more.

What was genuinely unprecedented this year was the hyper-speed at which the English-speaking world amassed a new collective vocabulary relating to the coronavirus, and how quickly it became, in many instances, a core part of the language, the organization said. Even back in April we noted that the frequency of the word coronavirus had exceeded one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language, time, as detected by our corpus data.

Oxford Languages said that by March coronavirus was one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language but its not the only word influenced by the pandemic.

The World Health Organization announced that it was characterizing COVID-19 as a pandemic, and since then pandemic has become one of the most significant words of the year its frequency has increased over 57,000% since last year, Oxford Languages said.

The presidential election, the environment and remote working all influenced the list too.

See below for some of the listed terms and definitions.

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COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, Superspreader: Oxford names 2020 words of the year, saying this year cannot be - MassLive.com