Lockdown, a word now associated with social distancing and COVID-19, has been selected word of the year by Collins Dictionary.
Collins said lockdown "encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people" in the pandemic. Lockdown is defined by Collins as "the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction and access to public spaces."
In addition, four more of the 10 top words for 2020 have to do with the pandemic: coronavirus, social distancing, self-isolate and furlough.
Collins registered more than 250,000 usages of "lockdown" during 2020 compared with 4,000 in 2019. That is a 62.5 times increase. The corpus contains more than 4.5 billion written materials from websites, books and newspapers as well as spoken material from radio, television and conversations.
"Language is a reflection of the world around us and 2020 has been dominated by the global pandemic," Helen Newstead, Collins language content consultant said.
"We have chosen lockdown as our word of the year because it encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people who have had to restrict their daily lives in order to contain the virus. Lockdown has affected the way we work, study, shop and socialize. With many countries entering a second lockdown, it is not a word of the year to celebrate but it is, perhaps, one that sums up the year for most of the world."
Collins Dictionary's top 10 words of 2020 include: Coronavirus (noun): any one of a group of RNA-containing viruses that can cause infectious illnesses of the respiratory tract, including COVID-19. Furlough (noun): a temporary laying-off of employees, usually because there is insufficient work to occupy them; (verb) to lay off (staff) temporarily. Key worker or keyworker (noun, Brit): an employee in any of a number of professions considered to be essential to the functioning of society, for example teachers, police officers, health workers, shop workers, etc.
Others are Megxit (noun, informal): the withdrawal of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from royal duties in January. From Meg(han), Duchess of Sussex and (e)xit; influenced by Brexit. Mukbang (noun, Korean): a video or webcast in which the host eats a large quantity of food for the entertainment of viewers. From meogneun (eating) and bangsong (broadcast). Self-isolate (verb): to quarantine oneself if one has or suspects one has a contagious disease. Social distancing (noun): the practice of maintaining a certain distance between oneself and other people in order to prevent infection with a disease. Also called: physical distancing > social distance or socially distance (verb).
TikToker (noun): a person who regularly shares or appears in videos on TikTok is on the list, too.
Previous words of the year for Collins were climate strike in 2019, single-use in 2018, fake news in 2017, and Brexit in 2016.
