Coronavirus vocabulary

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has brought many new words and phrases into everyday use. Some existed before but are used more now. Others have entered our vocabulary over the past couple of months.

  • antibodies
  • asymptomatic
  • backlog (in statistics)
  • Blursday (days blurring together during the pandemic)
  • bubble (as a verb)
  • contact tracing
  • corona
  • coronacation
  • coronacoaster (see above)
  • coronakilos (the weight you put on while staying at home)
  • coronavirus
  • coronials/covidials  (those born during the pandemic)
  • COVID-19
  • covexit (exiting lockdown)
  • covideo parties
  • covidiot
  • covidiotic
  • disease carrier’s allowance
  • doom scrolling
  • essential workers
  • flattening the curve
  • furlough
  • herd immunity
  • hydroxychloroquine
  • incubation period
  • key workers
  • Kudo (meeting programme)
  • lag (in statistics and internet speed)
  • lockdown
  • lockdown levels
  • maskne
  • novel coronavirus
  • pandemic
  • partial lockdown
  • patient zero
  • Pfizer
  • PPE
  • quaranteen
  • quaranteams
  • quarantine
  • reshoring
  • reskilling
  • respirators
  • risk groups
  • rona
  • social distancing
  • self-isolation
  • Skype (as a verb)
  • staycation
  • stimulus cheque
  • stockholding/warehousing
  • stockpiling/hoarding
  • superspreader
  • Teams
  • tiers
  • temporary redundancy
  • the front-line
  • upskilling
  • ventilators
  • WFH
  • Zoom
  • zoombombing
  • zumped ( being dumped via Zoom)

 

 

Author: Janet Carr

Fashion, beauty and animal loving language consultant from South Africa living in Stockholm, Sweden.

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