The word "pandemic" has been selected word of the year by Merriam-Webster, Inc., the 189-year-old American publishing company.
Merriam-Webster said searches for the word "pandemic" on its website increased since Jan. 20 - the day the first positive case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the U.S.
It said searches for the word rose substantially Feb. 3, the day the first COVID-19 patient was released from a Seattle hospital.
"People were clearly paying attention to the news and to early descriptions of the nature of this disease," said Merriam-Webster in a statement.
"That initial February spike in lookups didn't fall off - it grew. By early March, the word was being looked-up an average of 4,000% over 2019 levels. As news coverage continued, alarm among the public was rising."
Merriam-Webster defines pandemic as "an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population."
It said the single largest spike in searches for the word "pandemic" occurred March 11 when the World Health Organization officially declared "COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."
The increase in the number of searches on that day was 115,806% higher compared to the same day in 2019.
"Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it's fitting that in this exceptional - and exceptionally difficult - ear, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our Word of the Year will be," according to Merriam-Webster.
"This has been a year unlike any other and pandemic is the word that has connected the worldwide medical emergency to the political response and to our personal experience of it all."
Merriam-Webster's other top 10 words for 2020 were coronavirus, defund, mamba, kraken, quarantine, antebellum, schadenfreude, asymptomatic and regardless. Including pandemic, four of the top 10 words for 2020 were related to the pandemic.
Pandemic-related words also dominated the top 10 words for 2020 as compiled by Collins Dictionary. Collins, which released its top 2020 word list in mid-November, had "lockdown" as its word of the year.
Collins reported more than 250,000 usages of "lockdown" during 2020 compared with 4,000 in 2019, a jump of 6,150%. It 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.
Four more of the 10 top words for 2020 have to do with the pandemic: coronavirus, social distancing, self-isolate and furlough.
