(Bloomberg) -- Vax has been chosen as the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2021, with the term for vaccine capturing the essence of the past year during the coronavirus pandemic.
The report by Oxford Languages found that by September “vax” was more than 72 times more frequent in our language than at the same time last year. Numerous derivatives of the word have appeared in informal contexts, such as “vax sites”, “vax cards”, “getting vaxxed” and being “fully vaxxed”.
Oxford Languages in 2020 didn’t choose a single word to sum up the unprecedented year and instead produced a more expansive report on how language changed and developed. Previous words of the year have included “climate emergency”, “toxic”, “emoji tears of joy” and “selfie”.
