by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt
Greetings, fellow wordsmiths!
Perhaps you’re like me, and in the midst of all the holiday fa-la-la-la-la, you watch for the annual announcement of the “Word of the Year” by various dictionaries.
This year was somewhat predictable when it came to choosing a Word of the Year … and then again, it wasn’t.
For the first time ever, The Oxford English Dictionary didn’t select a Word of the Year. Why? Because 2020 was “… a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in a single word.” Its list of words for the year included: lockdown, coronavirus, pandemic, shelter-in-place, key workers, mail-in, remote, and unmute.
“I’ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we’ve just had,” said Oxford Dictionaries president Casper Grathwohl. “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.”
Despite Oxford English Dictionary’s decision to break tradition and not select a Word of the Year, others stayed the course.
Merriam-Webster chose pandemic as the 2020 Word of the Year, saying people looked up pandemic with “remarkable frequency” throughout the year – and particularly when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
Dictionary.com, which also selected pandemic as the 2020 Word of the Year, said “… it is the defining context of the year.”
The Collins Dictionary selected lockdown as their 2020 Word of the Year, stating, “… it is a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of COVID-19. Collins registered over a quarter of a million usages of ‘lockdown’ during 2020, against only 4,000 the previous year.”
Other words on the Collins shortlist included: BLM (for Black Lives Matter), Tik-Toker, and self-isolate.
While I understand why these venerable organizations chose the words they did, I would break ranks with them and add others to their lists – push back against such words as pandemic and lockdown.
I would add kindness. Yes, 2020 has been assaulted with a pandemic and besieged by lockdowns, but I’ve also seen people rise up and determine, again and again, to be kind to one another.
I would also add laughter. It has been a special kind of saving grace in the starkness of 2020 – and again, people have sought laughter out. Shared it. Stood beneath its healing balm.
What about you, my friends? What would you select as the Word of the Year for 2020?
How can you choose what is right for you when your decision will break the heart of someone you love? Having abandoned her childhood dream years ago, Johanna Thatcher knows what she wants from life. Discovering that her fiancé was cheating on her only convinces Johanna it’s best to maintain control and protect her heart.
Despite years of distance and friction, Johanna and her sisters, Jillian and Payton, have moved from a truce toward a fragile friendship. But then Johanna reveals she has the one thing Jillian wants most and may never have—and Johanna doesn’t want it. As Johanna wrestles with a choice that will change her life and her relationships with her sisters forever, the cracks in Jillian’s marriage and faith deepen. Through it all, the Thatcher sisters must decide once and for all what it means to be family.
Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” The Best We’ve Been, the final book in Beth’s Thatcher Sisters Series with Tyndale House Publishers, releases May 2020. Other books in the series include Things I Never Told You, which one the 2019 AWSA Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year, and Moments We Forget.
Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us.
An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.