If you were to choose a word that rose above most in 2020, which word would it be? Ding, ding, ding: Merriam-Webster on Monday announced "pandemic" as its 2020 word of the year.
"That probably isn't a big shock," Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told The Associated Press.
"Often the big news story has a technical word that's associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general. It's probably the word by which we'll refer to this period in the future," he said.
The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was designated a pandemic, but it started to trend up on Merriam-Webster.com as early January and again in February when the first US deaths and outbreaks on cruise ships occurred.
On March 11, when the World Health Organisation declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, lookups on the site for pandemic spiked hugely.
Site interest for the word has remained significantly high through the year, Sokolowski said.
By huge, Sokolowski means searches for pandemic on March 11 were 115,806 per cent higher than lookups experienced on the same date last year.
Pandemic, with roots in Latin and Greek, is a combination of "pan," for all, and "demos," for people or population.
