Word of the year: vax

Vax injected into English language - 3rd January 2022

‘Vax’ has been selected as the 2021 word of the year by lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Use of pandemic-related words has jumped dramatically thanks to coronavirus.

The word 'pandemic' itself increased by more than 57,000 percent in 2021 and, the previous year, Collins had selected the word 'lockdown'. OED senior editor Fiona McPherson says the word ‘vax’ was an obvious choice as it has had "the most striking impact". She explains that it is "the standout in the crowd" as it can readily be used to form other words like 'vaxxie' and 'vax-a-thon'.

Although ‘vax’ and ‘vaxx’ are both recognised spellings, the form with a single x is used more regularly. The OED's definitions for 'vax' include the noun form – a vaccine or vaccination – and the verb, vaccinate, and the terms 'anti-vax', 'anti-vaxxer' and 'double-vaxxed' also come up.

Oxford Languages and Collins each decide on their own word of the year every 12 months. However, Oxford concluded it was a highly unusual year, so expanded its award to cover several new key words including, ‘lockdown’, ‘bushfires’, ‘WFH’ (working from home), ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘keyworkers’ and ‘furlough’.

The word 'vax' comes from the Latin word 'vacca', which means cow. It refers to the work of physician and scientist Edward Jenner on the vaccination against smallpox, by using cowpox, in the late 1700s. The word was first recorded in 1799, while 'vaccinate' appeared the following year. The word also started to reappear in the 1980s, though it remained fairly rare.

Oxford Languages says its 'corpus' or bank of language samples from news content is updated on a daily basis and contains over 14.5 billion words for lexicographers to analyse.