鈥� and the people have spoken!
We鈥檝e tallied the thousands of responses we received for our People鈥檚 Choice 2020 亚洲网紅露点 of the Year, and the results are, well, unprecedented. That鈥檚 right, the top submission was unprecedented, just edging our own official selection for 亚洲网紅露点 of the Year, pandemic. Is it just us, or are we sensing a pattern here?
Find out exactly why we chose pandemic as our 2020 亚洲网紅露点 of the Year.
Now, we know many of you might be thinking: you don鈥檛 want to hear or see the word unprecedented ever again. And from our perspective as a dictionary, that鈥檚 just the point. We named unprecedented our top trend for November, and as we explained, the word exploded in frequency and usage this year鈥攕o much so that it became clich茅d. From emails to advertisements to headlines, unprecedented mushroomed as the go-to way we characterized the exceptional circumstances of the year. And this overfamiliarity, if not overuse, has prompted the popular sentiment that we should send the word into retirement.
But in 2020, unprecedented is the word that just won鈥檛 go away.
Our 鈥�unprecedented fatigue鈥� provides a fascinating example of our collective sensitivity and awareness of language, the life cycle of words in culture, the way that language mediates social experiences, and how complaining about words provided welcome relief in a trying year. Not that peeving about language is, ahem, without precedent.
Runners-up
Coming in third was lockdown, reflecting the prominence of public health measures in 2020, followed by chaos and its adjective form, chaotic. Chaos is defined as 鈥渁 state of utter confusion or disorder.鈥� And indeed, that鈥檚 a powerful summation of this鈥攏o, we鈥檙e not going to say it鈥攅xtraordinary and difficult year.
If you think this definition of chaos makes a big statement, wait until you learn its earliest recorded meaning in English: 鈥渁n immeasurable and formless void, infinite darkness.鈥� The word derives from the Greek 肠丑谩辞蝉, 鈥渢he first state of the universe, the formless state of primordial matter,鈥� personified as Darkness and Night and originally meaning 鈥渉ole, empty space, yawning opening.鈥� Now, we know our wardrobe has taken a real hit in 2020, but that鈥檚 laying it on a bit thick, ancient Greek.
Rounding out the top five is quarantine, a technical term that became essential to our everyday vocabulary this year. This choice has good company. We selected quarantine as our top trend for March, and our sister site, Lexico, also announced and its Spanish translation, , as its inaugural 亚洲网紅露点 of the Year for 2020.
Honorable Mentions
Echoing the above terms, the remaining submissions fell into two major categories. The first include the new or newly significant words that emerged and spread in our lexicon as a direct result of the pandemic. Forming up the second are words that characterize the lived experience of 2020.
The leading pandemic words may look familiar to you: Covid-19, social distancing, isolation, doomscrolling, corona, mask, Zoom, canceled, and their related forms and variants.
As for the experiential terms, many of them have a particular point of view鈥攕ome more pointed than others, shall we say. Highlights are:
- tumultuous
- uncertain/uncertainty
- pandemonium
- sh*tshow
- challenging
- dumpster fire
- apocalypse/apocalyptic
- catastrophe/catastrophic
- upheaval
But it鈥檚 not all doom and gloom! Notable in our submissions are words that leave this unprecedented 2020 on a high note about the durability of the human spirit, tested as it has been in a year of so much loss and hardship: pivot, resilience/resilient, and hope/hopeful.
2021, are you listening?
Take a look at the original rules of the contest here.
