Auniversal tragedy has yielded a paradox which will almost certainly enrich the study of philology, indeed the structure and historical development of a language. With coronavirus at its peak, the Oxford English Dictionary has incorporated a welter of expressions of contemporary usage, pre-eminently Covid-19, infodemic, self-isolation, self-quarantine and social isolation.
Not that these are value additions to the English language, but the lexicon may yet serve as a brief introduction to medical history in the first half of the 21st century. As a comprehensive essay towards usage when large parts of the world have been brought to its knees, the latest edition of OED makes a rapid-fire survey of the latest data-specific expressions such as “flatten the curve”, PPE (personal protection equipment), social recession, elbow bump (instead of handshake) and WFH (work from home).
The update of the dictionary is particularly significant not the least because the special edition “goes beyond our usual quarterly publication cycle”, to quote Ms Fiona McPherson, the OED’s editorial manager.
Her supplementary ~ “these are extraordinary times” ~ underscores both the enormity of the tragedy and the importance of the latest edition. It is a truism of the English language, as indeed many other languages, that a new phenomenon ~ recalling the gherao in West Bengal in the late 1960s ~ brings with it the development of a new language to describe it.
The raging crisis has palpably brought with it the emergence and development of new expressions to describe the virus and the suffering. The dictionary now incorporates new coinages and adaptation of terms that already existed to refer to the pandemic and its impact on the world. The spread of the virus has impacted the lives of billions of people the world over.
In parallel and for the vocabulary of the English language, it has advanced what they call a “new vocabulary”, one that encompasses specialist terms from the fields of medicine, epidemiology, new acronyms, and words to express the societal imperatives of imposed isolation and social distancing.
Not that the terms currently in usage are exactly novel… like perhaps the affliction; quite a few are said to date back to the 19th century. These have now acquired enhanced usage amidst the worst crisis humanity has faced in centuries.
The term, “social isolation”, for example, was used in the 19th century by countries which chose to distance themselves politically and economically from the rest of the world.
Likewise, the term, “social distancing” was first used in 1957, denoting social aloofness and without any physical connotation. Indeed, the connotation has changed with the context; it now denotes the physical distance between one person and another to avoid infection.