The year of lockdown

It’s no surprise that quite an few of the words on Collins Word of the Year 2020 range have one massive factor in common: the pandemic. one thing that modified everyone’s lives therefore deeply – going no country or continent untouched – was certain to have a major impact on our language. And our list shows North American nation that it’s not concerning the illness or its symptoms. The word “coronavirus” is there, of course, with a rare thirty five,000-fold increase in use year-on-year. however the social impacts – the changes to our behaviour and manner of life – loom even larger.

The restrictions placed on however we tend to move regarding and act with each other arguably had the foremost impact. And they’re diagrammatic initial and foremost by “social distancing”, a thought currently therefore pervasive that it's conjointly entered the language as a verb, “to socially distance”. in a different way within which we’ve had to increase the exclusion zone around our bodies is by “self-isolation”, that is currently a lot of ordinarily used because the 

Work was another space of unstable amendment. several were created redundant, whereas others found themselves functioning from home. a major proportion, though, were placed on “furlough” – not pink-slipped, however told to prevent operating, till businesses might get going once more. A word antecedently confined to the time unit departments of corporations trying to chop prices, its use surged because the depression unfolded . One cluster of individuals United Nations agency had to stay going, come back what might, of course, were the “key workers”: not simply doctors, nurses – however conjointly refuse collectors, communicating workers, and maintenance employees – all those that keep the wheels of society turning. The impulse to indicate however grateful we tend to all were took physical type in terms of applause on the threshold, however conjointly came through in multitudinous messages on social media, that contributed to a 60-fold increase in usage compared with 2019.

So what regarding the word of the year itself? traditional public life is suspended. underneath imprisonment, our waking hours get plenty smaller. we tend to come back to a less complicated state – that some have, indeed appreciated – however it’s a way more restricted one. we tend to see few individuals, and fewer places. We’re quite virtually confined. It’s not a shock to recollect, then, that imprisonment was originally a chunk of jail vocabulary: it’s once inmates ar confined to their cells as a result of some disturbance on the wing. 2020 is year that the that means of the word shifted irrevocably: in most people’s minds, imprisonment is currently a public health live – its use having enlarged exponentially since 2019.

Which isn't to mention that 2020 was all regarding the pandemic. different things happened! for instance, “Megxit”. Harry and Meghan’s call to face down as senior members of the royalty was a classic piece of tabloid fodder in an exceedingly year otherwise lacking in these tokens of relative normality. And, of course, the web carried on its merry manner, manufacturing terms like “TikToker”. The video sharing website eclipsed all others as a venue for memes and a peculiar new quite style, a minimum of for Generation Z, for whom TikToking is much the simplest way of life.

There’s only one a lot of word left – and that i feel it’s smart to out on a “mukbang”. With syllables aware mess and noise, this is often indeed one in all English’s only a few Korean loanwords (another is taekwondo). It merely suggests that “a video or webcast within which the host fare an oversized amount of food for the recreation of viewers”. This can be an odd construct – however a minimum of it’s one no imprisonment or social distancing will get within the manner of.

Written by: Shabbir Ahmed Qureshi