By John Ezekiel J. Hirro
It has not only been a horrible year for the history books but one for the dictionaries.
Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster and website Dictionary.com announced that the word of the year in 2020 is “pandemic,” which went viral this year along with the spread of the coronavirus disease.
“Based upon a statistical analysis of words that are looked up in extremely high numbers in our online dictionary while also showing a significant year-over-year increase in traffic, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2020 is pandemic,” the company said on its website.
Merriam-Webster defines pandemic as “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.”
Meanwhile, Dictionary.com said the word “pandemic” “is a consequential word for a consequential year.”
“As the pandemic upended life in 2020, it also dramatically reshaped our language, requiring a whole new vocabulary for talking about our new reality,” it added.
Dictionary.com defines pandemic as “a disease prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected 63,315,184 people worldwide as of Dec. 1, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.