Corona Daily 365: Coronaspeak: part II

The Oxford English Dictionary has now started monthly updates of coronaspeak, online of course.

Linguistically, words can be formed in several ways. Acronyms make a pronounceable word from the first letters, such as JOMO, which is ‘Joy Of Missing Out’. Somebody playing videogames the whole day can describe his state of happiness as JOMO. WFH or PPE are well-known abbreviations.

Two words can be combined to form a new one, like zoomdressing or coronababies. We will hear more about coronababies in 2021. A Coronawaltz is moving zigzag in public to avoid physical contact. Coronacuts are hairstyles during the pandemic. I don’t know why, but the Canadian term covember is the practice of not shaving for the duration of self-isolation. Covid antibuddies (not to be confused with antibodies) are friends or families who have gotten on the nerves of one another.

Blursday indicates our weakening sense of time. I am restricting myself to the English language. German, notorious for compounding words, has corona words like offnungsdiskussionsorgien (orgies of discussion) that describes the endless policy debates over reopening.

New expressions can replace the known ones. Shake-hand was replaced by an Elbow bump. Quarantine and chill is a substitute for the slang Netflix and chill (a codeword for sexual activity).

Portmanteau words like Brexit or Brunch is the most delightful play practiced by those inventing new words. Coronasplaining is done by armchair virologists.

Covidiot, probably the most popular term, refers to someone ignoring public health advice. Covidiots may not wear masks, think handwashing a waste of time, arrange parties at home, suntan on crowded beaches. Flu bros, a subset of this group, downplays the seriousness by calling it flu. Smizing, smiling with your eyes because your mouth is covered by a mask, has not succeeded.

Other creative ways create new meanings for known words. In Ireland, self-isolation for the over 70s is called cocooning. In neighbouring England, shielding is the term used for those vulnerable with health conditions.

Tony Thorne, a linguist with King’s college, London has collected more than 1000 words for the pandemic lexicon. (That may be his JOMO). He has appealed to the public to send him what they coin.

Your corona word will not be judged by its beauty or wit. Its success is determined by how widely it is used. Oxford English Dictionary will include a new word based on the frequency of its use in print, visual and social media. There are a couple of coronavirus corpuses, Oxford has its own. Google trends show you what people are searching for. The corpus shows what people are actually saying in online newspapers and magazines. One coronavirus corpus currently has 508 million words, and grows by 3-4 million words every day. Not all words are corona neologisms, but many are related to the pandemic. For example, between January and March, words like Wuhan, toilet paper, hoard were used very frequently. In OED, “outbreak” and “novel” were the top words in the first quarter of this year. PPE, reopen and defund were the top words in April, May and June respectively. Even the Oxford dictionary is greatly influenced by the American media whose influence in a pandemic is more overwhelming than usual.

(Continued tomorrow).

Ravi