The words of 2020
By: Michael Davies
Tags: Language, 2020, Pandemic, Covid 19, English

The words of 2020

2020 was not a vintage year. You were more likely to finish Netflix than see your grandparents. However, it did inspire a few new additions to the English language. Michael Davies Dec 24, 2020·3 min read

Pixabay

A note on these words: they are either portmanteaus (a mixture of two words), words that have been around for a while and have found new meaning or words with added prefixes to change their meaning somewhat.

Covidiot

We can thank portmanteaus for providing the English language with many annoying words such as brunch, chillax and Brexit. It’s latest gift was a mixture of covid-19 and idiot that perfectly sums up those peculiar people who feel that the virus is some made-up idea by the mainstream media in collaboration with Bill Gates and George Soros to keep us all in our homes while mutant lizards take over the world. Or something.

Karen

Having known several Karens who do not fit the definition, I was loath to include this but it has featured far too heavily in the media to be left out. A karen is someone who behaves obnoxiously and acts as if the world owes her a favour. The word became popular when Amy Cooper threatened to call the police to attend to a black man who had told her that her dog had to be on a lead in Central Park. He filmed the entire incident and she lost her well-paid job as a result.

Zoom

I’m still to be converted to the merits of Zoom as I am unsure of the difference between it and Skype; the name of an American company that few people had heard of last year now appears to be the definitive word for video conferencing. It has yet to reach verb-like status in the same way as to google but I am sure it’s only a matter of time.

Malarkey

A word inspired not by covid-19 but by Joe Biden, malarkey is an old-fashioned word meaning nonsense. Whether the 46th President of the United States manages to popularise it in 2021 is one for the futurists. It’s a fun word and I hope he succeeds.

Defund

In the US, there was frequent talk of defunding the police while in the UK people on the extreme right and extreme left would occasionally call for the BBC to be defunded if a reporter said something that they didn’t agree with. While the word is more nuanced than simply suggesting that funding should be taken away from a public body, few people recognise that.

Lockdown

The only time we had ever heard of a lockdown pre-2020 was when it featured in a prison movie. By the end of 2020, we were all Sylvester Stallone trying to break out of jail for a quick trip to the shop.

Doomscrolling

As most of the world seemed to be confined to their houses for large parts of 2020, there was very little one could do except reach for your mobile and see how bad things were outside. Doomscrolling is the act of looking through endless news stories on your phone about the number of people in hospital, the various mutations of the virus, the number of businesses that were closing and the number of deaths. It is not recommended.

For more words of 2020, watch this video. If there are any you think that have been forgotten, let us know in the comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKAVNhKtFJE&t