OREANDA-NEWS. The Oxford Dictionary has named the word vax ("vaccine", "vaccinate", "vaccinate") as the word of the year 2021, with the word being used more than 72 times this year than in 2020, according to the dictionary's website.

"Vax is our 2021 world. When our lexicographers started digging through our English corpus data, it quickly became apparent that vax is a particularly striking term. A relatively rare word in our corpus before this year, by September it was more than 72 times more common than at the same time last year," the report said.

Philologists noted that the word has spawned many derivatives that are used in informal contexts: vaccination sites (vax sites), vaccination certificates (vax cards), get vaccinated (get vaxxed) and being fully vaccinated (being fully vaxxed). "No word reflects the atmosphere of the past year better than vax," stressed the philologists.

In 2020. Oxford Dictionary couldn't pick just one word and compiled a list of the most frequently mentioned. It included "forest fires", "impeachment", "coronavirus" and "COVID-19", "lockdown", "belarusian" and others. Collins Dictionary named the word 2020. "lockdown". The Pushkin State Institute of the Russian Language named "self-isolation" and "nullification" as words of the year. The Merriam-Webster American Interpretive Dictionary named "pandemic" as the word of the year. According to Yandex, the words of the year were "quarantine", "pass" and "constitution".