Global Language Monitor Announces That ‘Covid’ is the Top Word of 2020

Global Language Monitor Announces That ‘Covid’ is the Top Word of 2020 (Top 50 #WOTY Ranked)

AUSTIN, Texas,

July 6, 2020 (Newswire.com)

Global Language Monitor (GLM), the data research company that documents, analyzes, and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, has announced that Covid is the Top Word of 2020 in its mid-year update.

“It’s no surprise that ‘covid’ has risen to the top of the rankings,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM. “However, ‘covid’ has received the highest number of citations ever recorded in our global survey. In fact, ‘covid’ has outranked all previous Words of the Year in the 21st century by a factor of 100, or more.”

Covid is the commonly used shorthand for the shorthand for Covid-19. Covid-19 is the official name of the virus caused by the SARS CoV-2 virus, so named in WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

Covid-19 is ranked No. 2 on GLM’s mid-year update. The Top Ten Words of the Year (#WOTY) for 2020 include Covid, Covid-19, Coronavirus, Corona, Face mask, Progress, Truth, Social Distancing, Trade War, and Sustainability.

Top Words of the Year of 2020 (#WOTY2020) mid-year update follow (Rank, Word, Definition/Comment).

Please Note: Typically, the Global Language Monitor publishes the Top Twenty Words in its rankings. In this #WOTY2020 mid-year update, for the historical record, we are extending the published rankings to the Top Fifty.

Global Language Monitor
Top Words of 2020 for Global English (Mid-year Update
Rank	Word	Definition
1	Covid	The shorthand for Covid-19 has the largest number of citations ever recorded in the 21st century.
2	Covid-19	The name of the virus caused by the SARS CoV-2 by WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
3	Coronavirus	SARS-CoV-2 full name of virus that causes Covied-19.
4	Corona	From the Latin for ‘crown’. Compare the Sun’s corona during a total eclipse.
5	Face mask	A face covering that helps halt the spread of Covid-19 to varying degrees depending on the material and number of layers.
6	Progress	The belief that society moves ever towards betterment
7	Truth	The idea that there is an objective, discernible reality for humans to discover and cherish.
8	Social Distancing	The distance individuals should keep from each other to lessen risk of virus transmission, usually about 2 meters or six feet.
9	Trade War	Colossal struggle between US and China with worldwide repercussions.
10	Sustainability	Creating an environment that supplies certain needs without comprmising future production.
11	Flatten the Curve	The ability to manage the number of case so as to not overwhelm the hospital system.
12	Lockdown	Restricting movement outside home or district.
13	Identity Politics	Politics based on certain elements of one’s makeup, such as skin color or ethic background, or gender.
14	Progressives	The word ‘liberal’ outlived its usefulness as the description of one’s political leanings.
15	Zoom	Group meetings held over videoconferencing channels.
16	Quarantine	Restricting physical movements to one’s home or institution, often separated from all others.
17	Migrants	People moving from one nation to another.
18	Donald Trump	Donald J. Trump, the 46th president of the US.
19	Symptoms	Physical conditions that may signify the presence of a virus or illness.
20	Outbreak	The seemingly sudden appearance of a disease in a community or geographic location.
21	CDC	The Centers fo Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.
22	Conservatives	Political philosophy that favors saving the best from the past while moving toward the future.
23	Unemployment	Highest unemployment numbers the US has seen since the Great Recession — and possibly the Depression.
24	Climate Change	Climate change has ranked in the Top Ten for the last dozen years or so.
25	Hand Sanitizer	Washing one’s hands with an anti-bacterial soap for thirty seconds is a strong barrier against Covid-19.
26	White Privilege	Supposed advantages carried by Whites by virture of their ethnic heritage.
27	The Pandemic	Current global pandemic precipitated by SARS-CoV-2.
28	The Virus	Shorthand for Covid-19.
29	Work at Home	The result of social distancing guidelines where employees must stay separated from each other.
30	Stimulus	Massive $3 trillion+ funding effort by the US Federal Government to help keep families (and the economy) afloat.
31	George Floyd	George Floyd, a black American, was killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck for some eight minutes in Minneapolis. His death sparked global protests.
32	Black Lives Matter	A movement protesting police brutality against African-Americans.
33	Woke	The state of suddenly becoming aware of social injustices in the society.
34	Joe Biden	Presumptive presidential nominee of the Democrat Party against President Trump.
35	Wuhan	Largest city in Central China, capital of Hubei Province, population 11,000,000; original epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak.
36	WHO	WHO – World Health Organization was established in 1948 by the United Nations as the agency overseeing international public health.
37	Disinfectant	A chemical agent that kills bacteria.
38	New Normal	The new reality of the pandemic-ravaged world.
38	MAGA	Campaign slogan of President Trump in 2016.
39	Fake News	Packaged news, planted sources, one-sided exposes, party lines, and official narratives are a new phenomenon only to those with no sense of history.
40	Shelter-in-place	Being confined to one’s home or institution to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
41	Nancy Pelosi	The Speaker of the House of Representatives; the highest ranked Democratic office holder.
42	Self Isolate	Quarantined for a minimum of 14 days after being exposed to Covid-19 to help stop the spread of the virus.
43	Dr. Anthony Fauci	Dr. Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
44	“I Can’t Breathe”	The last words uttered by George Floyd as he lay dying at the hands of Minneapolis police.
45	Essential Workers	Those workers who perform ‘essential’ tasks during the coronavirus pandemic, most notably in healthcare, food production and distribution, and the service sector.
46	Wet Market	Outdoor markets that offer recently slaughtered meat, fish and poultry; sometimes including live animals.
47	Impeach Trump	The Trump impeachment effort ended with a vote of acquittal on February 5, 2020, just as the pandemic was taking off in the US,
48	Defund Police	A movement to re-focus police departments to social welfare duties.
49	Super Spreader	A single person or event that propagates ‘clusters’ of the outbreak. Some 20% of infected super spreaders could be responsible for 80% of viral transmission.
50	Dr. Deborah Birx	Dr. Deborah Birx is the Coronavirus Response Coordinator, White House Coronavirus Task Force.
The Global Language Monitor

Typically, the Global Language Monitor ranks words, phrases, and names on three separate lists, and the lists are limited to 20 items. For this effort, GLM has combined the lists and extended the word count to 50 items.

Global Language Monitor began recording the Top Words of the Year in 2000 to document the history of the 21st Century through the English language, the world’s first truly global language. The words are culled throughout the English-speaking world, which as of January 2018 ranks more than 2.58 billion speakers. Global Language Monitor employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global internet and social media analysis.

NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the internet, blogosphere, and the top 300,000 print and electronic global media as well as new social media sources as they emerge.

In addition, the Global Language Monitor has also tracked the Top Words, Phrases and Names of the 21st Century.

More information about these and the company can be found at Languagemonitor.com.

About Global Language Monitor

Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.

Media Contact:

Paul JJ Payack
info@languagemonitor.com

pjjp@post.Harvard.edu

1 737.215.7750

Source: Global Language Monitor

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Categories: International News, General Interest

Tags: 2020, data research, Global Language Monitor, language, Top Words of the Year, trending, trends, WOTY2020

March 23, 2020April 4, 2020

Question: Who Missed the Emergence of the Coronavirus?

Answer: The Administration (including Congress), Academia, and the Media

See CoronaGeddon: Words of the Pandemic You Need to Know

The Early Stages of the Pandemic from The Lancet. with Data from HKUS&T

See The Coronavirus Calendar Here

The potential for a global pandemic of historic proportions was in plain sight for the administration, academia, and the global media to see in January and February.

Back in January, the Global Language Monitor, the data research company, created a data model of the expansion of the newly discovered n-coronavirus in Wuhan, China. (You can see this on the LanguageMonitor (dot) com site.)

The numbers were truly frightening, so frightening that I decided not to publish my findings until I could find a respected research study that mirrored my numbers and projections. I found one, published in The Lancet medical journal in the UK, that used data from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUS&T). The Lancet created a number of graphics that illustrated the impending nightmare that you can see on our site.

The key to HKS&T’s data is that it assumes a much larger base to start from (rather than China’s official count). I then created the Coronavirus Calendar that I published about six or seven weeks ago, the main point of which was that the virus doubles every six days or so, with an infection rate of 2.63 with a mortality rate of about .02. (The mortality rate has been a bit lower over the last few weeks but is actually higher in Iran and Italy.) GLM distributed this study to the worldwide media.

Update: China Did Not Count 43,000 Asymptomatic Cases

Though I created the Coronavirus Calendar, I am still shocked at how quickly it is moving. (For California, that’s 39 million * .6 * .02%.) If you extrapolate these numbers for your community, state, region or nation, you can see the horrifying conclusions.

This is not to say, of course, that this result is inevitable. There is still much that can be done by the concerted efforts of the global institutions — and the very real fact that many pandemics in the past have actually burned themselves out.

Paul JJ Payack
President
The Global Language Monitor
Austin, Texas

March 2, 2020March 3, 2020

“Infodemic” Declared English-language Word by the Global Language Monitor

One of the Fastest Words Ever to be Recognized in Global English

March 3, 2020, Austin, Texas — Infodemic has been accepted as an official English-Language word by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), the US-based data research firm. This is among the fastest a word has ever met the minimum criteria for ‘wordhood,’ about six weeks from the first recorded citation.

The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, commented a few days ago: “A global epidemic of misinformation - spreading rapidly through social media platforms and other outlets - poses a serious problem for public health.

According to the MIT Technology Review, “The coronavirus is the first true social-media “infodemic” [where] Social media has zipped information and misinformation around the world at unprecedented speeds, fueling panic, racism … and hope”.

“Infodemic has met all requirements to be considered an English-language word — ready to takes its place among the million-or-so others of the fourteen-hundred-year-old language,” said Paul JJ Payack, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst.

To be considered an official English-language, the neologism must satisfy all three criteria:

Geographic distribution — The word must appear across political entities and geographic regions.
Diversity of Media — The word must appear in a variety of media, including print and electronic media, online and social media, and books and magazines.
A minimum number of citations: 25,000.

At the Munich Security Conference on February 15, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pronounced, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”. Within a few weeks, market data provider Refinitiv included the word in research reports and then was repeated in various media outlets, including the South China Morning Post.

A quick search on Goole now provides nearly 700,000 entries.

Infodemic is a ‘portmanteau’ neologism. First used by Lewis Carroll in 1871, a linguistic blend of words or phonemes (sounds) are combined into a new word, in this case, Information and epidemic, Such words can be easier to pronounce and understand than other types of new word creation.

About Global Language Monitor

Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, To Global Fashion Capitals, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics.

For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com, email info@languagemonitor.com or call +1.737.215.7750.

February 13, 2020March 31, 2020

The COVID-19 (Corona Virus) Calendar

The ThoughtTopper Institute

Projections from Published Numbers

March 29, 2020 Update

Beijing excluded 43,000 Positive Tests from the Published Numbers

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Calendar

New: What You Need to Know & How to Protect Yourself

(South China Morning Post 2/21/2020)

This is being posted only to those who follow me; Please be discreet when distributing.

We are publishing this article only to show the extent of the spread of the virus IF LEFT UNCHECKED. All recent potential pandemics (including Ebola, SARS, and MERS) were stopped due to deliberate action taken by the worldwide medical community (especially the WHO, the CDC, NHC, etc.,) and the proper precautions directed by the relevant government bodies and heroic NGOs.

*********************************************************

ThoughtTopper Institute: The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Calendar

Overview: The news from China is not good. Most recently The South China Morning Post detailed,

“Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services … Beijing Daily reported on Monday that the capital, with a population of over 20 million, would step up efforts to further restrict access to residential communities and compounds and introduce a citywide registration system for entries into Beijing.

In addition, “Officials at the epidemic control and prevention centre in Shanghai said on Monday that “the vast majority” of the city’s 13,000 residential communities and compounds had instituted “lockdown management”, including entry restrictions and mandatory temperature checks.”

Confusion Abounds

According to the New York Times, “on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 new cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei Province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. The death toll in the province rose to 1,310, including 242 new deaths.

“The sharp rise in reported cases illustrates how hard it has been for scientists to grasp the extent and severity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, particularly inside the epicenter, where thousands of sick people remain untested for the illness.”

Furthermore, some investigators have suggested that the number of new cases was leveling off and will, in fact, peak and level off in the next few weeks. One study actually picked a date (February 23); mark your calendar.

Projections from Published Numbers

The COVID-19 Calendar is based on the data provided by the British medical journal The Lancet working with data supplied to them by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, among others. The Global Language Monitor is not responsible for any of the data — only with the extrapolation of the data.

Obviously, COVID-19 cannot expand indefinitely as in the extrapolation above. Typically, these pandemics either burn themselves out or a halted through Human intervention. The gravest predictions now top out at a 60% infection rate for the entire Human population. Rest assured, that that has never happened in all recorded history.

Note: Tip of the Ice Berg? These extrapolations in themselves are hypothetical and should be taken as such. These numbers assume that the number of infections has been substantially under-reported, due to a number of factors, as outlined in the Lancet article.

This data was gathered with an abundance of caution after studying the various numbers coming out of Wuhan. The projected numbers are published herein because these results have been assiduously avoided in the media in all forms.

Origin of Graphics, The Lancet

This ThoughtTopper Institute publication was compiled by Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.

About Global Language Monitor

Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor is a data research organization. For more information, call +1.737.215.7750 or email Info@languageMonitor.com