As the Covid pandemic rolls along, it has made us familiar with words which were once the domain of specialists — R0 Factor, RT-PCR, N95. It’s given us new words like doomscrolling and quarantini and covidiot. Oxford Dictionaries expanded its Word of the Year for 2020 to “Words for an Unprecedented Year”, including Covid-19, WFH, lockdown and that Zoom favourite — unmute. The Cambridge Dictionary chose quarantine. In 2021 Merriam Webster selected vaccine and Oxford chose its jauntier version, vax.
It’s astonishing how the pandemic has changed our language by mainstreaming words that only epidemiologists once used, adding brand-new ones and resuscitating words that had existed in cobwebby corners of the English language. But as Omicron sweeps through 2022, it’s clear this pandemic ain’t done yet. And that means its word cloud is also not done growing.
I think there should be a word for that peculiar sensation of tears in your eyes, the desperate need to sneeze and that cross between a tickle and a burning sensation when the nasal swab is jabbed up your nostril and viciously swirled around. Something like SwabBurn? It’s a word that could last beyond Covid.
The sting of rejection made him gasp as if he had just been hit with SwabBurn.
There needs to be a word for the particular anxiety of living in a no-man’s land between the time you get your nose swabbed for the RT-PCR test and the time the test results arrive. And given the overworked labs, as the results take longer, that anxiety just reaches fever pitch. How about CovidLimbo?
She realised she had been CovidLimboed after checking for the hundredth time to see if her WhatsApp message was showing two blue ticks.
As each variant comes with its own symptoms, we’ve slowly realised almost everything from a scratchy throat to fatigue to a headache could be a sign of Covid. It makes one almost nostalgic for the ‘good’ old days when you’d rush to smell the coffee beans every time you had a Covid anxiety attack. One could say every symptom has now been covidised.
There’s no point trying to go through the pros and cons when you’ve covidised everything.
There definitely needs to be a word for the fake reassurance of meaningless symbolism which has become a sign of our times. On a recent flight we were told to observe “social distancing” protocols while disembarking from the plane as if that was even a realistic option on a jam-packed flight. A large new year eve’s party advised revellers to carry masks and sanitisers as if they were amulets that would keep the virus at bay in a crowded club. A ride-hailing service promises its cars are fully sanitised even though the driver has no time to even take a pee break between passengers, let alone sanitise the car. I call this SafeCharade.
The magic potion was just coloured water but the wizard hoped the SafeCharade would give the knights a shot of courage as they tried to slay the dragon.
Social étiquette rules are getting a Covid makeover. We make plans for meet-ups which go for a toss with rising Covid numbers. Or we wonder if we should keep a dinner date with X when Y, whom we met two days ago, has just gotten tested for Covid. And when should we let X know about Y? Codithering is like dithering but here no answer is the right answer.
She codithered so much about her diet options, she just ended up putting on weight because of the stress.
From the early days of the pandemic with people cooped up at home, we’ve seen trends catch on, sweep through social media and then burn out. And we all hopped on to the bandwagon afraid we were missing out. Remember Dalgona coffee, short, intense and then gone without a trace?
After several Dalgona relationships, she felt she was ready for something more long-term.
And, of course, the strange Covid logic which lets restaurants stay open till 10 p.m. but then imposes a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. without telling us how the patrons are going to get home. Or keeps markets open from 3-5 p.m. when many local markets are shut for siesta anyway. That’s CovidLogical, meaning it makes sense to some bureaucrat somewhere and the goalpost constantly shifts. It’s not to be confused with covidiots who wilfully ignore common sense.
Demonetisation had a logic but it was really CovidLogical.
Some of these words will hopefully not outlive the pandemic. But some might burrow into our vocabulary. And we’ll know we’ve reached a lexicographic turning point if instead of saying “Covid spreads like wildfire” one day we say “That wildfire spread like Covid”.
Then we’ll know our language has truly been covidised.
Sandip Roy, the author of Don’t Let Him Know, likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not .
