The world’s lockdown language

Self-isolation. Social distancing. Furlough. Coronavirus. Lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on so many aspects of our lives, including our vocabulary.

Not only have these ‘unprecedented’ times reintroduced words into our everyday arsenal that we would only occasionally use before, thanks to their sudden increase in use across the media, but it has also driven the creation of brand new words and phrases – known as neologisms – which often spring up during sudden changes in our society.

The Second World War was one particular period in history, for example, where many commonly used phrases we use today were first introduced into our lexicon.

So whether you’ve been making quarantinis at home during lockdown, riding the ups and downs of the coronacoaster with your emotions or calling out covidiots for their anti-social distancing – it’s safe to say a lot of new slang words and compound phrases have made their way into our vocabulary over the past few months.

Aston spoke to Ed Cooke, master of memory and co-founder of Memrise and Rob Paterson, polyglot and senior language specialist at Memrise o discuss the most frequently used new phrases and words that have emerged in the English language since the beginning of the pandemic and  also run through the linguistic inventions popping up in other languages too, and explain how these words are devised and their usage spread.

Photo by Ivan Shilov on Unsplash