‘Unprecedented 2020’ sees Oxford unable to pick just one word of the year
The Oxford English Dictionary has for the first time been unable to name its traditional word of the year, instead exploring how far and how quickly the language has developed in 2020.
It has released a report entitled 'Words of an Unprecedented Year 2020'.
Oxford University Press South Africa's Phillip Louw says unlike many other years, 2020 has seen the mushrooming of new words and phrases.
Words related to the Covid-19 pandemic dominated the trends during the year, although the Australia Bushfires headlined the news at the start of 2020.
The Black Lives Matter movement also made a massive impact.
"Because it is such an extraordinary and unprecedented year for us, in terms of tracking the language, we felt that we would really be doing the language an injustice by picking one word,” says Louw.
"And that is why we released this report that we call 'Words of an Unprecedented Year 2020.' It is not unprecedented because of global events, obviously, there have been those before; world wars, and other pandemics and plagues.
"But this is the first time that we have been able to track the language in real-time as it changes in the period of a pandemic year.”
Louw says some new words, such as Covid-19, have made it into the dictionary.
