Merriam-Webster’s top word of 2020 is pandemic

On March 11, when the World Health Organisation declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, lookups on the site for pandemic spiked hugely.

New York: 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.

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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. The latter is the same root of “democracy,” Sokolowski noted.

The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.That was after the plagues of the Middle Ages, Sokolowski said.The Merriam-Webster site has about 40 million unique monthly users and about 100 million monthly page views.