World / What are some of the words of the year 2020 as per Oxford?

London: Oxford Dictionaries have expanded their Word of the Year to an entire list after an 'unprecedented' 12 months. 

Language developed as rapidly as our lives changed in 2020 and the expanded list reflects the new additions to our everyday lexicon.

From covidiot, superspreader and moonshot, the words have been chosen to reflect the 'ethos, mood, or preoccupations' of 2020. 

The 'Words of an Unprecedented Year' report also includes lockdown, circuit-breaker and Zoombombing, defined as the practice of infiltrating Zoom video conference calls and posting offensive content.Other terms which have seen a surge in use this year include unmute, referring to people making themselves audible during online conferences, and Zoombombing, a variant on photobombing which was first recorded as a word in 2008, and refers to disturbing online calls on Zoom.

Oxford University Press said it used 'evidence-based data' to source this year's top words and language developments.

The report added: 'There is no doubt the volatile events of 2020 have had an unprecedented impact on the way we live and work, specifically Covid-19, which has drastically altered our daily lives and our language. 

There were words to reflect the coronavirus pandemic, others to represent our growing use of technology as people had to adapt to working from home, and also words to describe the social movements witnessed around the globe this year. 

Black Lives Matter, take a knee, and virtue signalling all appeared on the curated list. As did furlough, remotely and unmute.  

While informal phrases coined over the past year, known as neologisms, also made the final submission. 

These included Blursday, defined as when you have no idea what day of the week it is, covidiot, a person who disobeys guidelines designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and the informal term for the virus, rona. 

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, told The BBC: 'I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. 

'The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time.

'It's both unprecedented and a little ironic - in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other.'

Previous examples of Word of the Year include vape, selfie and post-truth, with the 'crying with tears' emoji deemed the winner in 2015.

The report says usage of the word pandemic increased by 57,000% last year while lexicographers found use of the word 'coronavirus' passed one of the most frequently used nouns, time, in April.

It said: 'Of course, Covid-19 and all its related vocabulary provided a clear focus for our language monitoring this year but there were many other areas of activity which saw enormous language change and were equally demanding of our attention, such as political and economic volatility, social activism, the environment and the rapid uptake of new technologies and behaviours to support remote working and living.

'We also cast our net wide to capture how English around the world expressed its own view, sometimes sharing the collective expressions for the phenomena endured globally this year, and at other times using regionally specific words and usages.

'All of which goes to illustrate that 2020 is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single 'word of the year'.'