Coming up on this special edition of Word Matters, the words of 2020.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode,
Merriam-Webster editors explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
2020 will go down in the books as, well, quite a year.
It challenged everyone in multiple ways, but words never escaped us entirely.
Dictionary users still came to Merriam-Webster.com to learn more about the language,
which means we still have a word and words of the year.
Today,
Peter Sokolowski and I reveal our 2020 word of the year and a few of the other words that made the year what it was.
As the Annas Horbilis that is the year 2020 comes to a close,
there are various announcements of words of the year.
We at Merriam-Webster always determine a word of the year.
It is always based on evidence of what words people have been searching for in the merriam-webster.com dictionary.
Peter, do you care to announce what this year's word of the year is?
Well, yes, indeed.
And we can discuss so much about how we come to this and also what it means for the dictionary and for the culture.
Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2020 is pandemic.
This will surprise very few people, I suspect.
The thing about looking at the news through the prism of vocabulary is that the words that people look up aren't always the most important words.