Words of an Odd Year

At this time of year, dictionaries announce their Words of the Year. It’s a bit of a publicity exercise, to be honest, and not something to set too much store by, but still fun to see what gets chosen. This year’s selections have been a bit of a mixed bag and many of them have left me thinking “hmm, odd choice” - but then maybe that appropriately reflects what an odd, discombobulating sort of year it’s been.

WOTY

Different dictionary publishers use different criteria to choose their Words of the Year, some of which are clearly stated, some less so. Cambridge’s choice is based (largely) on the most popular word that people have looked up on their dictionary website and this year was announced as perseverance - which at first sight seems an odd choice. It’s popularity was linked to the NASA Mars rover called Perseverance that landed back in February. It saw a huge spike in lookups, likely from two sources - English learners who wanted to know what the word meant and also L1 English speakers who wanted to check the spelling. To me, it feels like a slightly odd choice, regardless of the stats, just because it refers to such a specific moment, quite early in the year, but I guess it does also chime with the perseverance we’ve all had to demonstrate in living through a second year with Covid.

Collins, on the other hand, have gone down the new coinages route, choosing novel words and terms that have appeared, or at least gained a foothold, this year. Their shortlist was topped by NFT or non-fungible token - yes, exactly, neither do I! Again, it feels a slightly left-field choice, but their shortlist more generally does reflect some of the themes of the year with several tech-related words (NFT, metaverse and crypto), some pandemic words (double-vaxxed, pingdemic and hybrid working) and miscellaneous others - as I said, it has been a miscellaneous sort of a year, so maybe that’s appropriate.

Oxford went for perhaps the most obvious choice, vax, with an accompanying report into the language of vaccines. American dictionary, Merriam-Webster also went for vaccine. Probably for many of us, it is the word that best reflects the year, but then it doesn’t provoke much debate, does it, or make you read on to find out why.

I think my favourite WOTY comes from the Australian National Dictionary Centre who plumped for strollout - apparently a term to describe the slow pace of the vaccination rollout in Australia. Yes, it’s one of those gimmicky buzzwords that was probably coined by a headline writer, but it does definitely tell you something about a time and a place.

Words of My Year

From a professional point of view, I’ve worked on a mix of projects this year that have had me delving into different types of vocabulary. I started off the year researching idioms and phrasal verbs for new editions of two books - Work on Your Idioms and Work on Your Phrasal Verbs (both for Collins). We were focusing on the most frequently-used items in each group, so not necessarily touching on low-frequency trending words. However, we did add call out to the unit on Reporting in the media, which I think has proved to be quite key this year, with unacceptable behaviour being called out in all kinds of areas of life. Here are a few key collocates I found from recent corpus data.

Recently, I’ve spent more time than you would think is feasible researching prefixed words for another project. I’m not sure that any of them would be candidates for WOTY, but to continue the ‘odd year’ theme, they’ve definitely sent me off in some peculiar directions, including getting to grips with the philosophical concept behind antirationalism and trying to understand the physics of multipole.

I’ve also spoken about language change - and its relevance to ELT - at a number of events, both this year and last. What struck me when I was putting together my most recent session for TESOL France was the degree to which I needed to update my examples of coronavirus-related vocabulary. Words that had sprung up in the early days of the pandemic when we were all coming to terms with lockdowns - like coronadodging (trying to avoid people on the pavement to maintain social distance) and quarantinis (quarantine cocktails, sometimes shared with friends via Zoom) - already feel quite passé and have instead been replaced by terms that reflect the place of Covid as a mundane reality in our everyday lives - like corona-related and covid-appropriate.

On a more personal note, I think one word I’ve used a lot in 2021 has been hermity - as in, I’m getting quite hermity. (Yes, it’s a made-up word. Apparently, hermitic or hermitical is the adjective from hermit, but doesn’t feel quite the same) After so long staying at home, avoiding crowded places and barely travelling, I’ve definitely got used to a more isolated sort of existence and my re-entry is proving to be a slow one. Although there have been few official restrictions in the UK since the summer, I’ve felt wary about getting back to normal activities and have continued to mostly stay at home - partly out of caution and a sense of social responsibility, but if I’m honest, as much out of habit. I’m still feeling that life is very much 'on pause', so for 2022, I’m hoping that something will prompt me to 'press play' again.

Post-lockdown Coronavocab: pre-booking & walk-ups

This sign outside a local museum recently caught my eye because it contains interesting examples of two word types I’ve been working with lately; prefixes (pre-booked) and phrasal verbs/derived nouns (walk-ups). They also seem to reflect something of the new normal, in the UK at least, at the moment.

Pre-booked

This is one for the pedants out there! Because, of course, if you book something, you reserve it or buy your ticket in advance. So, what then is pre-booking? The pre- seems like a somewhat unnecessary prefix. And the difference between booking and pre-booking does seem to be a subtle one. Pre-booking simply emphasizes how far in advance you book. It can describe a situation where you can reserve something before it’s officially available to buy. It can just signify the need to book something well ahead rather than leaving it to the last minute and potentially losing out. And in this case, it emphasizes the idea that people need to book their tickets, probably online, ahead of arriving at the venue to avoid crowds of people queuing up.

Until quite recently, in the UK, almost anywhere you visited - a museum, exhibition, garden, restaurant and even most train tickets – had to be booked in advance and typically for a specific time slot in order to help venues to control the number of customers and avoid crowds of people. According to Merriam-Webster, prebook was first used back in 1855, but there does seem to be evidence that it’s seen a spike in usage in the past year (not sure what the spike in 2014 was down to).

Walk-ups

As regulations relax here, however, more places are starting to accept walk-ups; customers who arrive on the day without a booking.

Interestingly, this sense of walk-up doesn’t seem to feature in most dictionaries. Most list the US sense to refer to a multi-floor building without a lift/elevator where you literally have to walk up the stairs. M-W also has a sense “designed to allow pedestrians to be served without entering a building” as in a walk-up coffee counter, also a common feature of pandemic life where anything designed to keep people outdoors has flourished.

The walk-up counter at a local coffee shop

Corpus data shows that the ‘customer arriving on spec’ sense has been around for a while, although the inverted commas around the first example perhaps hint at the term’s origins as trade jargon rather than common everyday usage:

There has very clearly though been a significant jump in usage, which I suspect is less about this being a new term than the fact that, in a time of changing rules and norms, we have more need to differentiate between customers who pre-book and those who arrive on spec, and more clarity over what’s possible. [Note the stats here are for all senses of walk-up.]

Interestingly, the 2020-21 data shows lots of walk-up Covid testing sites, but also starts to hint at the opening-up of other venues to casual custom.

Walk-ins

And just when I thought this post was ready to go, I headed out for a walk to take photos of a couple of local walk-up coffee counters and … 1 I found one of my favourite coffee shops has moved its counter indoors – another sign of changing times, but still great coffee – 2 I came across several signs for walk-ins … So, I scurried back to my corpus to check it out.

A sign outside a local bar

 

And in the window of a barbers

Again, this is polysemous with its most common use as an adjective to describe large storage spaces – walk-in wardrobes/closets/freezers. I also found several dictionary entries for both the adjective and noun forms to refer to (places that accept) customers who arrive without a booking – most labelled as (mainly) US. The corpus data I looked at for walk-in suggested a more even US/UK/other split than for walk-up (which was quite US-heavy) and it also showed an upward trend in 2020 (again for all uses), although slightly less pronounced.

 

I don’t know about you, but it was the final example above that really typified my recent experience of either not going out because it’s too much of a nuisance to get a booking or of shivering outside in a not-very-summery British summer!

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 …