![]() ![]() ![]() It notes that interest in the word has been high since the start of the pandemic, with people searching and discussing the funding, development and distribution of vaccines well before they were actually available at pharmacies.Īnd lookups of "vaccine" jumped by 535% in August, which Merriam-Webster says is because "discussions about policy, approval, and vaccination rates - rather than the vaccine itself - sent people to the dictionary."įor context: This was around the time when New York and California mandated vaccines for health care workers, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Biden administration announced plans for booster shots for the general U.S. Lookups for the word increased 601% year-over-year from 2020, and were up 1,048% from 2019, the dictionary said. That was certainly the case with "vaccine" this year. It must have been a top lookup at in the past 12 months, and it must have seen a significant increase in lookups over the previous year. – The Associated Press contributed to this report.The word of the year is determined by data, as Merriam-Webster has explained in the past. The following words also made Merriam-Webster’s list of the top lookups of the year: insurrection, perseverance, woke, nomad, infrastructure, cicada, Murraya, cisgender, guardian and meta. The company added that it had to “revise and expand” its definition of the word because messenger RNA technology, which was used to develop the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, “triggers an immune response in an entirely new way.” The new definition – which begins, “a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease” – includes additional information about mRNA and proteins. The biggest science story of our time quickly became the biggest debate in our country, and the word at the center of both stories is vaccine.” The promising medical solution to the pandemic that upended our lives in 2020 also became a political argument and source of division. “This is what happened to vaccine in 2021. But they can also become vehicles for ideological conflict,” Merriam-Webster said on its website. “In everyday use, words are useful tools that communicate assertions, ideas, aspirations and uncertainties. ![]()
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