By now, you probably know the disease at the center of the global coronavirus pandemic is called COVID-19. But perhaps you don’t know why.Merriam-Webster acted quickly in March to add and update entries on its site for words related to the pandemic. While “coronavirus” had been in the dictionary for decades, “COVID-19”. Thirty-four days later, Merriam-Webster had it up online, along with a couple dozen other entries that were revised to reflect the health emergency.
“That’s the shortest period of time we’ve ever seen a word go from coinage to entry,” Sokolowski said. “The word had this urgency.” “Coronavirus” was among runners-up for word of the year as it jumped into the mainstream. “Quarantine,” “asymptomatic,” “mamba,” “kraken,” “defund,” “antebellum,” “irregardless” , “icon,” “schadenfreude” and “malarkey” were also runners-up based on lookup spikes around specific events.
Particularly interesting to word nerds like Sokolowski, a lexicographer, is “quarantine.” With Italian roots, it was used during the for the period of time a new ship coming into port would have to wait outside a city to prevent disease. The “quar” in quarantine derives from 40, for the 40 days required.
Sad, but true. The memory of this pandemic will live in our language for a while.
Also, some massively over-used words (just for clicks) ..race, racial, racist ..people of color ..black
90% of news about covid and trump
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