It was borrowed from the New Latin “vaccina," which goes back to Latin's feminine “vaccinus," meaning “of or from a cow." The Latin for cow is “vacca," a word that might be akin to the Sanskrit “vasa," according to Merriam-Webster. The first known use stretches back to 1882 but references pop up earlier related to fluid from cowpox pustules used in inoculations, Sokolowski said. The word “vaccine" wasn't birthed in a day, or due to a single pandemic. So did vaccine hesitancy and friction over vaccine passports. Debates over inequitable distribution, vaccine mandates and boosters kept interest high, Sokolowski said. The world's first jab occurred earlier that month in the UK.Ĭompared to 2019, when there was little urgency or chatter about vaccines, Merriam-Webster logged an increase of 1,048 per cent in lookups this year. shot was administered in New York in December after quick development, and months of speculation and discussion over efficacy. “The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects," Sokolowski said.Īt Merriam-Webster, lookups for “vaccine" increased 601 per cent over 2020, when the first U.S. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic" as tops in lookups last year on its online site. – The Associated Press contributed to this report.The selection follows “vax" as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. The following words also made Merriam-Webster’s list of the top lookups of the year: insurrection, perseverance, woke, nomad, infrastructure, cicada, Murraya, cisgender, guardian and meta. The company added that it had to “revise and expand” its definition of the word because messenger RNA technology, which was used to develop the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, “triggers an immune response in an entirely new way.” The new definition – which begins, “a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease” – includes additional information about mRNA and proteins.
The biggest science story of our time quickly became the biggest debate in our country, and the word at the center of both stories is vaccine.” The promising medical solution to the pandemic that upended our lives in 2020 also became a political argument and source of division. “This is what happened to vaccine in 2021. But they can also become vehicles for ideological conflict,” Merriam-Webster said on its website. “In everyday use, words are useful tools that communicate assertions, ideas, aspirations and uncertainties.
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