The Oxford English Dictionary was unable to pick one 2020 word. This is evidenced by a report published on the Oxford University Press website.
Instead, lexicographers have chosen a range of words that best describe the coming year. Among the selected concepts are those related to the epidemiological situation: “coronavirus”, “quarantine” and “social distance”.
In addition, Oxford experts noted the words characterizing the political events of 2020: “impeachment” and “Belarusian”. The first relates to the procedure in which the US Congress considered the accusation of the Democratic Party against US President Donald Trump. The second word refers to the elections in Belarus, as a result of which thousands of people in the country rallied against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Another word of the year was the concept of “forest fire” – last year lexicographers also highlighted what relates to the climate situation on the planet. It was the phrase “climatic emergency”.
Earlier in November, experts from the State Institute of the Russian Language. A.S. Pushkin recognized that “self-isolation” and “zeroing” are the main words of 2020. Based on the analysis of the texts of thematic blocks, the experts selected keywords that are characterized, on the one hand, by high frequency, on the other, by semantic capacity and significance. The Kremlin was surprised by this choice.
