‘Pandemic’ picked as 2020 word of the year by Dictionary.com
Over time, we were pandemic baking and pandemic dating and rescuing pandemic puppies from shelters. All of which led Dictionary.com on Monday to declare “pandemic” its 2020 word of the year. For about half the year, it was in the top 10% of all our lookups.”Another dictionary, Merriam-Webster, also selected pandemic as its word of the year earlier Monday. Kelly said pandemic beat out routine lookups usually intended to sort more mundane matters, such as the differences between “to, two and too.”“That's significant,” Kelly emphasized. The pandemic as an event created a new language for a new normal.”Lexicographers often factor out routine lookups when evaluating word trends.
Singular 'they' is voted Word of the Decade by U.S. linguists
(Reuters) - U.S. linguists on Friday chose they as their Word of the Decade, recognizing the growing use of third-person plural pronouns as a singular form to refer to people who identify their gender as neither entirely male nor entirely female. The same trend was behind the selection of they as the Word of the Decade, recognizing its growing use to refer to a person whose gender identity is non-binary. The singular use of they was previously designated as the 2015 Word of the Year. Other decade nominees considered on Friday included:- #BlackLivesMatter, the hashtag used to protest alleged disparities in police use of force against African Americans. The society, founded in 1889 and dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, started selecting its Word of the Year in 1991 and since then has picked only two other Word of the Decade winners.
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