Coronavocab: the pingdemic

I haven’t posted about coronavocab for a while, largely because the corpus I was using to track new words last year hasn’t kept up – and currently only has data up to Jan 2021. I should say that the folks who’ve been putting together the Timestamped JSI Web Corpus did an amazing job keeping pace last year, so it’s really no surprise that they’ve finally had to slow down.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist posting about this latest new coinage, just because it’s such a great creation. So, this post is based on anecdotal evidence and some googling. To explain the pingdemic though, I need to take a step back first.

be/get pinged (verb, usually passive) 

In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) introduced a phone app last year that’s designed to track coronavirus infections. Apparently, it’s been downloaded by millions of people. It works in two main ways, firstly it uses Bluetooth to detect whether you’ve been in close contact with someone who later tests positive for Covid-19, i.e. you’ve been close to them for more than about 15 minutes.

You also use it to check in to places like restaurants by scanning a QR code, so that if there’s an outbreak connected to the venue, you can be alerted.

 

And if you receive a notification via either of these methods, you get pinged to tell you to self-isolate for 10 days.

If I get pinged, there is only me - so the shop would have to close. (BBC) 

More than half a million people in England were "pinged" by the NHS Covid-19 app in a single week (ITV news)

Employers report staff shortages as thousands of workers pinged (Personnel Today) 

What do I do if I am pinged by the NHS Covid-19 app? (The Times) 

More people in Leeds were 'pinged' by the NHS Covid app than anywhere else in the country last week (Yorkshire Evening Post) 

pingdemic (noun) 

In recent weeks, the number of infections in the UK has increased dramatically – although thankfully, with many people now vaccinated, those cases have largely been mild or asymptomatic. Along with that, thousands of people are getting pinged every day resulting in a pingdemic where increasing numbers of people are being told to self-isolate, leading to many businesses being short-staffed or even forced to close.

NHS Test and Trace is penetrating through walls and forcing neighbours to self-isolate in the latest sign of a ‘pingdemic’. (Metro) 

Amid both the pingdemic and face mask rule confusion, we asked our readers what they are most worried about this summer (Telegraph) 

Bin collections have also been hit by the pingdemic in Wyre council in Lancashire. (Guardian) 

The cause appears to be the so-called “pingdemic”, with essential staff being told to self-isolate because they have been in contact with a coronavirus case. (Independent) 

Inevitably, this is going to be a fairly short-lived new term, but I still find it oddly pleasing – what with the light-hearted nature of the word ping which brings a bit of fun amongst the gloom and also because it just mirrors the word it’s based on so nicely. 

double-jabbed and fully-vaxxed (adjectives)

One reason why the pingdemic might not be with us for too much longer is that in a few weeks, the guidelines are due to change so that people who’ve been double-jabbed and fully-vaxxed will no longer have to isolate and will instead just be asked to take a Covid test.

From 16 August, double jabbed individuals and under 18s will no longer need to self-isolate if they are identified as a close contact of someone with COVID-19 (UK government website) 

Double-jabbed Britons have been given the green light to jet to holiday hotspots like Greece and Italy this summer without quarantine. (Evening Standard) 

People who have not been double jabbed will have to test negative for COVID-19 within 24 hours of arrival in France if they are travelling from the UK, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Greece. (Sky News)

The phenomena of the double x in vaxx (short for vaccine/vaccinate) is an odd one. Other verbs ending in x don’t double their final consonant; taxed, faxed, relaxed. It’s not a new coinage as it’s been used in the context of anti-vaxxers (people opposed to vaccination) for several years – and it may have originated in the controversial anti-vaccine film; “Vaxxed”. Whatever its origins, in the past few months it’s blossomed - and freed itself of those connotations.

Two-thirds of adults in the UK are now double-vaxxed  (City AM) 

Canada may let fully vaxxed Americans visit next month (The Suburban) 

Work ongoing to understand the profile of fully vaxxed people with severe outcomes. (Metro) 

Can anyone out there confirm I have this right for what is needed to travel from UK to Majorca next week please - both adults double vaxxed last jab a month ago. (Mumsnet)

Interestingly, that last example, a comment from an online forum, shows how while pingdemic is probably more one for journalists and headline writers, being pinged, jabbed and vaxxed have all passed into people's everyday vocabulary.

We’ll have to wait and see how long the pingdemic lasts and what new coronavocab coinages continue to emerge as the situation develops …

Coronaversaries: rollouts and re-entry

It's a year ago this week that the UK went into its first coronavirus lockdown and I've spotted quite a few #coronaversary (coronavirus + anniversary) posts across social media as people share what they were doing a year ago and reflect on the past twelve months. So, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the language – or coronavocab – that's developed to describe life in an unprecedented year.

Looking back at my coronavocab posts from last summer, much of the language I highlighted has remained with us and become an all-too-familiar part of our everyday vocabularies; face masks, social distancing, hand sanitizer, lockdown, homeschooling. Some of the more light-hearted coinages also still float about in articles and blog posts; coronacoaster, covidiots, quarantinis, isobaking. But how has our language changed to reflect developments so far in 2021?

For a start, what we call the virus has gradually changed. It started off as coronavirus, but then got renamed (in Feb 2020, for the sake of accuracy) to Covid-19 and has, over time, just come to be known as Covid. Looking at some stats from the Coronavirus Corpus (which collects texts about the pandemic from across the internet), Covid on its own still seems to lag behind, but that's probably down to the fact that it's a corpus of written texts including a number of sources that likely prefer the full form. If you were able to look at spoken usage, I suspect Covid would shoot up the rankings.

Probably the most significant event to influence the way we're talking about the pandemic in recent months though has been the vaccine rollout. Much like lockdown/lock down and the other phrasal verbs in one of my earlier posts, rollout (noun) and it's accompanying phrasal verb, roll out, are not completely new words, but they have increased massively in frequency in a very short time and shifted slightly in usage. Previously, rollouts were predominantly business-related and to do with new products being launched (the rollout of the new iPhone). However, since Covid vaccines started being approved for use late in 2020, governments around the world have been setting up vaccine program(me)s to roll out the vaccine and offer as many people as possible a Covid jab (especially in the UK) or a Covid shot (more in the US).

The language around vaccines includes the everyday language we all use to talk about getting our jabs (in red), the language relating to getting vaccines out to people (in green) as well as still some discussion about their development and production (in blue). It will be interesting to see how the collocations in the red group shift and get added to over the coming months as the implications and effects of more people being vaccinated play out.

Looking forward, in the UK at least, there's starting to be lots talk of easing (of restrictions) and a flurry of re- words such as re-entry and readjustment both from a practical and a psychological perspective:

What are you looking forward to re-entering or concerned about readjusting to in the coming months?

10 ways to tackle coronavocab: #1 Coronacoinages

When I recently asked ELT teachers on Twitter how much their students wanted to talk about the pandemic, I was unsurprised to get a mix of answers. A few said they didn’t want to talk about it at all, some said their students were keen to talk about the situation and they felt it was good to let them get it out. Most were somewhere in-between. Comments included “no more than any other topic” and “it inevitably crops up”.

If you’d like to tackle the topic with your students, over the next 10 mini-posts I'll be suggesting different angles you could take and activities you could try or adapt. You don't need to make a big deal of it, it could just be a quick 10-minute activity. And you might be able to work in some useful ideas about English vocabulary in general too.

Which words to choose?

I'll be suggesting a range of possible vocab items in each post. Please select the words you want to focus on so they're appropriate for your students taking into account their age, level and interests, and don't overload them with all the words in each set. Working through 10 or 12 new words gets boring and repetitive, even for advanced learners, and they really won't remember them. Pick a handful, explore how they're used in context, draw out some general points and just have fun with them.

1 Coronacoinages

One of the more light-hearted effects of the coronavirus pandemic is the way it’s inspired a wave of new coinages, many taking the corona- prefix as a starting point. English is a fabulously creative language when it comes to combining words and parts of words to create new ones and it’s a really useful aspect of language to highlight with students to encourage them to notice how other words are made up of meaningful parts. A greater awareness of morphology can then help learners to decode new, unknown words they come across in future. Remember that these activities aren't about learning these particular words – which will likely (hopefully!) have slipped out of usage in a year's time – it's about noticing word parts and about having fun with English.

Some examples in context:

Take a mini coronacation by driving by these landmarks.

Many of us are on what's been called the coronacoaster, experiencing sudden ups and downs.

The coronacrisis has hit the company hard.

Expert advice before you grab the clippers for that coronacut.

Manipur still remains a corona-free state.

The management said that the park had been made corona-proof.

A local psychologist offers tips to ease anxiety in the coronaverse.

Panic buying saw the country's supermarkets stripped of flour as many turned to isobaking.

Name three things that are helping you get through isolife right now

All it's going to take is one covidiot who will ruin it for everyone else.

It's also a good idea to go over these guidelines with your quaranteam group as well.

In these quarantimes, some of us are missing our access to hairdressers and it SHOWS.

Often, the loudest voices are the ones with misinformation; we're having an infodemic.

New and unfamiliar sights await: hand-sanitizer dispensers scattered on every surface, employees smizing through their face masks.

Activities:

• Pick a handful of new words and get students to guess what they mean by dividing them into their parts.
• Find examples of the words in use (use the examples above or trying googling them) and get students to work out the meaning from context. Images to go with the examples would work well too.

My attempt at 'smizing' - smiling with my eyes when wearing a face mask

• Get students to make up some of their own coronaspeak words to describe phenomena they’ve experienced.

For more about emerging coronaspeak and some useful definitions, check out Tony Thorne's excellent series of blog posts. You'll also find a few of these new coinages already appearing in online learner's dictionaries - Macmillan has 'Open Dictionary' entries for coronacoaster, quarantini and infodemic (among others) and smize appears in several online dictionaries. And for more ideas and activities for teaching vocab generally, take a look at ETpedia Vocabulary: