2020 Defined By 'Pandemic'-Related Words, Merriam-Webster Says

SPRINGFIELD, MA — In a year that can be defined by using myriad adjectives, the fact that "unprecedented" was commonly sought out in Merriam-Webster’s search engines is hardly surprising. But as 2020 mercifully draws to a close over the next three weeks, the global health emergency has become part of part of America’s vocabulary, according to the dictionary’s list of most-searched words.

Merriam-Webster announced its annual Word of the Year on Monday and, unsurprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic played a major role. In fact, "pandemic" and "coronavirus" are the top two searched-for words on its website out of a list of 11 — four of which were related to the crisis Americans have faced since March.

According to Merriam-Webster’s website, "pandemic" was looked up more than 115,800 percent more on March 11 than on that date in 2019. March 11 is when the World Health Organization gave COVID-19 the official designation as a pandemic, which is defined by the dictionary 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."

The momentous jump represented one of the biggest traffic spikes Merriam-Webster saw all year, one in which "pandemic" remained near the top of its word list for the remaining months of 2020. Such staying power is unique for a word, according to Merriam-Webster Editor-At-Large Peter Sokolowski, who said that the dictionary's Word of the Year announcement did not involve as much excitement this year because of the predictability of the "winner."

Of the 500,000 words included in the dictionary, "pandemic" managed to remain in the Top 20 or 30 words for the balance of the year, Sokolowski told Patch.

"That kind of accumulates kind of a raw tonnage of curiosity and interest," Sokolowski, who has been studying word usage data for the past 18 years, said in a telephone interview.

"Ten years from now, we will be saying, 'During the pandemic' and I think this is going to be the word by which we refer to this period for the rest of our lives."

In addition to "coronavirus" — which saw an uptick in web searches of more than 162,000 percent on March 19, nearly two months after the first positive case was announced in the United States — "quarantine" and "asymptomatic" also cracked Merriam-Webster’s list of the 11 most-searched words of the year and ranked fifth and eighth, respectively.

According to Anne Curzan, Dean of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts and a recognized expert in language and linguistics, the fact such words topped the Merriam-Webster list came as no surprise.

"Words often gain prominence in a given year because of what is happening in the world," Curzan wrote in an email to Patch on Monday.

In addition the words that have become a regular part of the country's vocabulary, Americans have also extended such repeated words in an act of what Curzan refers to as lexical creativity and have playfully added to with word play such as "quarantini " and "covidiot" during an incredibly difficult period of history, Curzan wrote.

But 2020 also produced other memorable word choices in a year that also included a summer of social unrest following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. "Defund" came in at No. 3 overall after many activists made pushes across the country for cities to defund the police. "Defund," defined by Merriam-Webster as the act of withdrawing funding from, was looked up 6,000 percent more in 2020 than it was in 2019, when Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year was an ordinary "they."

The rest of the 2020 list was as follows:

• "mamba" (3 of 11): An homage to Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who was known as "the Black Mamba" and who died along with nine others in a helicopter crash in January. On the day of Bryant’s death, "mamba" was searched 42,750 percent more than typical, Merriam-Webster reported.
• "kraken" (4 of 11): The new name of Seattle’s National Hockey League franchise drew 128,000 percent more searches on Merriam-Webster than in typical times, as Americans discovered that the NHL will now pay homage to a Scandinavian sea monster.
• "antebellum" (6 of 11): According to Merriam-Webster, the word meaning “before the war” drew popularity beginning in June when the band “Lady Antebellum” announced it would shorten its name to “Lady A,” which sent Americans scurrying to Merriam-Webster before the word was used singularly in a movie title in September.
• "schadenfreude" (7 of 11): This grew out of the ranks of spelling bee stumpers in 2020 thanks to two major news-grabbing days — including in October, when President Donald Trump contracted the coronavirus and then later when Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus, Sokolowski said. The tongue-twisting schadenfreude, meaning “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others,” enjoyed a jump of nearly 25,000 percent in searches from 2019. The other scandal that moved "schadenfreude" toward the head of the class occurred when celebrities, including Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, became entangled in a college admissions scandal.

"Icon" (10 of 11) drew searches in homage to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Congressman John Lewis, while "malarkey" (11 of 11) was a vocabulary favorite of President-elect Joe Biden.

Many of the words that remained that drove America's vocabulary and dictionary searches this years were tied to news events, which is not always the case, Sokolowski said. Some words, he said, have very time-driven search lives – such as holidays and other special occasions. But in 2020, current events played a major role in the way Americans searched for the meaning of a variety of words.

"When a word goes from the general to the specific, that's what sends people to the dictionary," he said. "It's that urgent specificity of this moment that affected all of our lives."

Still, perhaps the most chalkboard-screeching word on the list came in at No. 9, with "irregardless." The controversial entry comes thanks to tweets from actress Jamie Lee Curtis and musician John Legend insinuating that Merriam-Webster added the word in 2020. Not true, according to Merriam-Webster, which states the word first found its way onto its dictionary pages in 1934.

Irregardless, Curtis’ and Legend's social media posts sent a large number of folks — 464 percent more, in fact — rushing off to Merriam-Webster’s search engine looking to see if the word had indeed been officially added.

While Curzan, the University of Michigan Dean and professor of English language and literature, said the angst over "irregardless" is nothing new, she finds the continued opposition of its use striking for reasons some may find surprising.

"As the editors of Merriam-Webster note, the word (and yes, it is a word) was entered in one of their dictionaries in 1934 and has been in their dictionaries ever since," Curzan wrote in the email. "(The word is included) as it should be, because we have lots of evidence of the use of irregardless, including as an emphatic form by some speakers. Yet one tweet can spark outrage all over again that this word is a word."

Yet, according to the Merriam-Webster editor Sokolowski, just because a word — and in this case, of the 2020's most searched words – appears in the dictionary's pages does not imply that it should be used in everyday life.

"We're not there as the traffic cops to say, 'you are a word and you are not a word,'" Sokolowski said. "But we are there to record the actual existence of a word. So, is irregardless a word? Yes, it is. Should you use it? No you shouldn't.

"If you use the word irregardless in a professional or academic setting, you will be judged harshly needless to say. ...So irregardless had a very big year."