Collins Dictionary names ‘Lockdown’ as word of the year

“Lockdown” has been chosen as word of the year by Collins Dictionary. According to BBC and the Guardian on Tuesday (local time), Collins registered more than 250,000 usages of “lockdown” from websites, books, and newspapers this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a 60-fold increase from last year’s usage of 4,000. But Collins did not specify the scope of aggregation.

Helen Newstead, language consultant at Collins, said the year 2020 has been dominated by the global pandemic, adding “lockdown” has been chosen as word of the year because it “encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people who have had to restrict their daily lives in order to contain the virus.”