The sun is shining outside, and it has been getting warm the past weeks.
The calendar at the bottom right of our laptops tells us that it is June – summer is coming.
But this year (and last) we exchanged our summer bodies for corona bodies, our beach parties for zoom parties, and our exciting weekends and work-filled weeks for a blur of days where no one knows exactly what day it is today anyway.
Many countries are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and soon we will be released into the wild, feeling like the animals our corona-hairstyles have us looking like.
But after two and a half of the world-wide pandemic that changed our lives from one day to the other, what did we actually get out of it?
A whole new wave of words of course! Prepare yourself a CoronaRita cocktail and keep reading to expand your coro-cabulary.
Dutch
It all started back in November 2019, when someone ate a bat and the world changed. The Dutch now have an expression based on this event, “toen ging de vleermuis in de soep“, which literally translates to “then the bat went into the soup”, and refers to the source of a problem, the point where it all went wrong. Out in the world, there is someone whose actions will now never be forgotten by the Dutch.
Fast forward to March 2020, when we embarked on our lockdown journeys. No one knew how long we would be stuck inside, but one thing was for sure: toilet paper was essential for survival!
By the Dutch speakers this was termed coronahamsteren, literally hamstering (gathering like a hamster) for corona. What an adorable image the Dutch language gave us, for what was actually a total frenzy.
The Dutch-speakers also developed a term for a grandmother who babysits the grandchildren, in spite of being in the risk group, when kindergartens and schools were closed all over the world: the coroma (oma is the Dutch word for grandmother).
The coromas probably weren’t too popular with the coronazis though, who made sure that everyone was following the rules, and that people in risk-groups didn’t mix with others.
But how adorable is their nickname for the face masks we all had to wear whenever we wanted to go outside?
In Dutch, the masks are now called beklapje, and let’s be honest, that sounds like something I’d much rather wear than the old boring face mask.
Another fun word that the Dutch blessed us with is cockdown – the decrease in libido one experiences when being locked inside with nothing happening for too long. We’ve all been there.
Finally we can’t forget about cloudclubbing. Trust the Dutch to get innovative – if they can’t go to a bar or club and party, well then they will just do it online instead! I image it is not exactly the same, but hey, as long as you’re having fun!
Spanish
The Dutch aren’t the only ones who know how to throw an online party.
The Spanish have started throwing zoomleaños (from cumpleaños, meaning birthday).
Instead of meeting up to celebrate your friends, you can now just log in to their zoom meeting, and if you need a break, you can just “accidentally” turn off your camera and sound – neat trick!
The Spanish are actually so into muting themselves, that they adopted the English word and verbified it the Spanish way, creating the hybrid mutearse.
Let’s be honest, this word gives slightly different connotations in English, where it sounds more like that person who always “accidentally” mutes themselves, and you just know they aren’t paying any attention.
Now for another word, where you as an English speaker can almost see where this is going even if you don’t speak Spanish: coronabulo.
In 2020, and actually ever since 2016, fake news has been all the rage and this Spanish word means exactly that: fake news related to the corona virus.
Something that is not fake news at all though, is the fact that Spanish people for a long time would stop what they were doing every Friday at 8PM, to pay tribute to doctors and nurses all over the country. This was called coronaplauso (as in applause).
Czech
The Czeck also came up with a word related to doctors and nurses, namely the covidárium. This is the place in the hospital where COVID patients are treated.
German
In Germany the new words are not directly related to doctors and nurses, but words related to the medical field have emerged nonetheless.
One of these is Impfdrängler, which describes a person who desperately tries to get ahead of the line and get vaccinated. The reason that this word arose, was that there was quite a lot of chaos relating to the vaccination schedule in Germany.
The Germans also blessed us with the word Corona-Matte, literally a corona-mat, describing the hairstyle we probably all had at some point when the hairdressers were closed, and we we’re left to fend for ourselves.
Somehow the Germans really know to put words on those things we all went through, because they also created the word overzoomed which completely encapsules the way I have felt for the past year or so.
Germany was also one of the first countries to make the wearing of facemasks mandatory, thereby giving rise to the term Maskenplicht (mask duty).
Scandinavian languages
In Denmark they were less happy about the masks, and one particular complaint relates to the acne that follows the constant wearing of a cloth over half your face: the maskne, as the Danish call it. All there is to say is, that at least the mask also covers the acne it causes, right?
The word of the year 2020 in Denmark was samfundssind (community mind, or spirit), and it was used extensively by politicians to remind the Danes to keep to the rules. In Sweden they used the word tvåmetersregeln (the two-meter rule) to remind people not to get too close.
Unlike the Dutch and the Spanish, the Scandinavians were not big fans of the zoom parties, so instead they came up with some corona-friendly alternatives. The Norwegians created the avstandstur, literally the walk with distance, and the Danes were all about the albuehilsen (elbow greeting), where instead of hugging or shaking hands, they would bump elbows.
Do you recall back in March 2020 when you would get something stuck in your throat and cough, and everyone would just stare at you with disdain thinking you had corona? The Norwegians certainly do because the word hosteskam (coughing shame) quickly got hold. And those people who would judge you, they are probably the same ones as what the Swedish call hobbyepidemiologer. To be fair though, didn’t we all go through a phase where we were following everything and thought we knew it all? Eventually though, as time passed, we just settled into the reality and stopped watching every single small press conference.
The Norwegians sat back and settled into the new reality with the rest of us and came up with the word karantenekropp to describe what happened to their bodies (and everyone elses) as all that sitting back started to show on our bellies. At least we all look like that now right, so I vote for no judgments this summer to those who haven’t found their summer bodies between the rows of zoom meetings yet.
English
Speaking of zoom meetings, one of the biggest changes to our daily life was the sudden need to work from home, or to WFH. Cats, dogs, birds, and other animals were now our colleagues, popping into screens giving us a much needed break every now and then.
The term biobreak has also gained a foothold in many of those meetings, as a nice way of saying that you really gotta take a dump. Because those meetings can sometimes go on forever and ever, and it is easy to forget (but important to remember) those small breaks, and that we are still, after all, humans on the other side of the screens.
It’s not only the minutes and hours that blur together during these WFH-days, but also the days themselves. Honestly, the amount of times someone has asked me what day it is and I had no clue is worrying. Very adequately, and one of my personal new favourite words, is blursday, which can mean any day of the week, it doesn’t matter anyway, they are all the same.
Finally the English language brought us another gem, the covidiot. This is someone who does stupid things related to COVID, such as not staying in quarantine when they might be sick.
French
The French have a word for everything, also when it comes to quarantine. They decided to merge the French word for fourteen (quatorze) with the word for quarantine (quarantaine). This leads us to the quatorzaine: the fourteen day quarantine.
The French creativity doesn’t end here though. In an effort to encourage cycling to work, in order to reduce the amount of people in the public transports, the French created specific cycle paths called coronapistes.
Anyone who has ever been stuck in a Parisian metro around rush hour would know to appreciate this initiative.
In summation, there are a ton of new creative, fun, practical, or simply awesome words that have entered our vocabulary all over the world in the past year and a half.
There hasn’t been room for all the words on this coro-cabulary list, but if you know more words you are more than welcome to submit them here.