The Oxford English Dictionary has picked Vax as the Word of the Year.

Vax was named Word of the Year by lexicographers in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Vaccination-related words have increased in frequency in 2021 because of Covid, with all double-vaccinated, unvaccinated, and unvaccinated experiencing spikes in usage. Fiona McPherson, the senior editor at OED, said Vax was the obvious choice because it "had the most tangible impact."

"It dates from at least the 1980s, but according to our corps, it was rarely used until this year," he said. "When you add your flexibility in composing other words — vaxxie, vax-a-thon, vaxinista — it becomes clear that vax stands out from the crowd." Vax and vaxx are accepted spellings, but the simplex-form is more common.

Definition of vax from the Oxford English Dictionary:

The use of the word pandemic has also increased by more than 57,000% this year. The Oxford and Collins languages ​​determine the year's word, respectively; in 2020, Collins chooses "key." But Oxford decided that was an unprecedented year with too many candidates and added several new keywords to its awards, including Blocking, Fire, Covid-19, and Black Lives Matter, WFH [work from home]. Key workers and leave.

Previous year's words. . .

The word Vax, which won Oxford this year, was first recorded in English in 1799, while its derivative Vaccination and Vaccination first appeared in 1800. All of these words are ultimately coming from the Latin word Vacca, which means cow. According to the OED, this is due to the pioneering work of British physician and scientist Edward Jenner in vaccinating smallpox with cowpox - a mild infection of cattle - in the late 1790s and early 1800s.

According to Oxford Languages, its corpus or language sources collect news content updated daily and contains more than 14.5 billion words that lexicographers can search and analyze.