2021 Words of the Year

By edhat staff

Esteemed dictionaries have revealed their top words of the year for 2021. All words are related in some way to another year of dealing with a pandemic as scientific advancements continue and we all learn to cope with a new normal.

Allyship

Dictionary.com announced their Word of the Year for 2021 is allyship. “2021 was a year defined by the many ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the polarization of 2020—and the various ways we continue to grapple with them. The vastness of such a year could never be fully summarized with a single word. But there is one word that’s intertwined with so many of the things we’ve experienced in 2021: allyship, our 2021 Word of the Year,” Dictionary.com states.

allyship (noun): the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.

Vaccine

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is vaccine, something we’ve all heard a lot of the past few years. “The promising medical solution to the pandemic that upended our lives in 2020 also became a political argument and source of division. 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,” writes Merriam-Webster.

vaccine: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as

a : an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)

b : a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)

Perseverance

Cambridge Dictionary announced their Word of the Year for 2021 as perseverance. The word perseverance saw a high number of searches on Cambridge Dictionary throughout 2021, with more than 243,000 views so far this year. The word also captured “the undaunted will of people across the world to never give up, despite the many challenges of 2021,” according to Cambridge Dictionary.

perseverance (noun): continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time.

VAX

Oxford Dictionary has name “vax” as their 2021 word of the year.

“When our lexicographers began digging into our English language corpus data it quickly became apparent that vax was a particularly striking term. A relatively rare word in our corpus until this year, by September it was over 72 times more frequent than at the same time last year. It has generated numerous derivatives that we are now seeing in a wide range of informal contexts, from vax sites and vax cards to getting vaxxed and being fully vaxxed, no word better captures the atmosphere of the past year than vax,” the dictionary states.