W
hat do you think is the word that the Oxford Dictionary picked out for 2021?
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What do they say over there in Oxford Languages?
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,,Vax is our 2021 Word of the Year.”
,,Vax is our 2021 Word of the Year.”
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When our lexicographers began digging into our English language corpus data it quickly became apparent that vax was a particularly striking term. A relatively rare word in our corpus until this year, by September it was over 72 times more frequent than at the same time last year. It has generated numerous derivatives that we are now seeing in a wide range of informal contexts, from vax sites and vax cards to getting vaxxed and being fully vaxxed, no word better captures the atmosphere of the past year than vax.
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| credit: OUP |
Other derivatives of vax include:
“vaxdar,” a term derived from radar, referring to some people’s supposed ability to intuit whether an individual has been vaccinated.
“Vaxinistas,” a term for people who flaunt their vaccination status to the annoyance of others on social media,
You might take “vaxxies” — selfies taken while getting vaccinated — before taking off for a “vaxcation” or “vaxication,” made possible, perhaps, by a brand-new vax card.
And as vaccine availability has spread across the globe, so have usages of phrases such as “vaccine mandate,” “vaccine rollout,” “vaccine booster” and “vaccine hesitancy” (not to mention regional variations, such as “jab” and “jag”).
source Oxford Languages & The Washington Post
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