“Lockdown” was voted the word of the year for 2020 by the English dictionary publishing group Collins, an unsurprising development given the ubiquitous presence of the Covid-19 virus on all media and its subsequent impact on social life across the globe with authorities imposing some form of quarantine to another to curb its spread.
As noted, the lockdown is on a 10-word list, most of which are related to the COVID-19 pandemic, published by Collins English-language lexicographers.
“Language reflects the world around us and in 2020 the global pandemic prevailed,” said Helen Newstead, a language consultant at Collins, in a statement.
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“We chose ‘lockdown’ as the word of the year because it sums up the experience shared by the billions of people who had to limit their daily lives to stop the virus,” she added.
In Britain, the country with more than 49,000 deaths mourning most of Europe’s deaths from COVID-19, residents of England were re-quarantined on November 5 for a month after a first lockdown they experienced at the end Of March.
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