In a year when people are talking about vaccines, Oxford Languages has named "vax" which means vaccine, as the most popular word of 2021. Talks about vaccines are swirling in various media.
As quoted from The Guardian, this year many people have asked whether the vaccine has been injected or not, whether the second dose has been vaccinated, or what brand of vaccine was received.
The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary noted an increase in the use of the word "vax" more than 72 times compared to last year. The word, and other words related to vaccination, have also entered a wider context including "full vaxxed" and "vax cards".
Oxford Languages also tracks the rise and fall of vaccine vocabulary, from the use of "vaccine distribution" to "vaccine rollout" to "vaccine passport" becoming common language in mid-March this year.
In addition, "vax" is used in words to describe those who do not want to be vaccinated, such as "anti-vax" or "anti-vaxxers".
"When reviewing the language evidence, vax stood out as the obvious choice of words. The significant spike in word usage caught our attention. Then we ran an analysis and a fact emerged, vax is at the peak of popularity right now," said Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages.
The word "vaccine" has been in English since the late 1790s, when Edward Jenner discovered that cowpox could be used as a vaccine against the deadly smallpox virus.
"It's not surprising that this is something that has to do with vaccinations because these things are contemporary, and people are thinking about vaccines more than ever before," said Dr Mercedes Durham, a reader in sociolinguistics at the University of Cardiff.
He added that social media contributed to popularizing a word and reaching a wider audience. According to him, everyone in their own family and circle comes up with new words and takes them to social media so that they are known to others.
"What social media can do, such as the 'vax' example, for example when we see someone tweeting using the word, then other people use it," he concluded.
