Tag: collins_dictionary

Lockdown Leads the way

It’s been a seismic year and language has evolved at breakneck speed to help us keep up to date with it all. The emergence of particular words and phrases seems to have run at a much higher level than has recently been the case.

As the pandemic has proceeded, so we have found all manner of unaccustomed terms coming into our everyday usage so that we barely remember a time when social distancing and furlough were not things we said every day.

So as word of the year season dawns, it is of course no surprise that the words of the pandemic are dominating proceedings.

Collins Dictionary is first out of the blocks as usual, going with Lockdown as its choice. It points out that as well as increased usage, Lockdown has changed from its prison roots, so while it retains many of the restrictions associated with its origins, it now carries elements of public health policy, the good with the bad.

What I think is interesting about lockdown is the way that people have already been seeking not to use it. Clearly the negative associations which Collins have cited are playing too much in politicians’ minds, so they will do what they can to convince us that we are not in a lockdown when in fact we are. So instead parts of the UK are now being treated to a ‘firebreak’ or a ‘circuit breaker’, even the English restrictions are named as national restrictions rather than anything else, with the word lockdown not even appearing on official guidance.

We will see a number of other words of the year over the next few weeks – all will no doubt relate to Covid-19 in some form or other. What will be interesting to note will be whether some words have already run their course, and officials will be trying to replace them with something else in a way to make the message appear to be something different from what it truly is.

Photobomb Starts Word of the Year Season

So Word of the Year season has started, and Collins dictionary is first off the mark with Photobomb as its choice for 2014. Explaining its choice, it says that photobombing has come of age this year, with the habit of popping up unexpectedly in the back of people’s photos exemplified by Benedict Cumberbatch and The Queen among others this year.

Collins lexicographer Ian Brookes said that the word was an undeniable winner and had been tracked for a couple of years, adding: “Its vastly increased prominence in 2014 shows the power of media and sporting events to publicise a word and bring it into wider use.”

Second place went to Tinder, a dating app, while Bakeoff, as in the hit BBC cooking show, came third.

This depressing list highlights the conclusion I have rapidly been coming to over the last few months. After some excellent years for language fans, I think that 2014 has been sadly lacking in terms of great new words being coined, or even old words getting a new lease of leaf. Part of me can’t help feeling that photobomb has been given this accolade because of Selfie’s success last year. So often has it subsequently been quoted as the word of 2013, getting in early with another popular form of imagery spread by social media could be construed as trying to ride on its coat tails.

The fact that second place goes to an app and third place to a TV show simply reinforces to me that choosing words of the year for 2014 will continue to prove particularly difficult, and that we may not look back on 2014 as a vintage year for new words.