It’s injected itself into the English lexicon.
Vaccine-related vocabulary has unsurprisingly proliferated amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Oxford English Dictionary has even named “Vax” the word of the year, with the term’s usage up 72 times from 2020.
“When reviewing the language evidence, vax stood out as an obvious choice,” Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages, told the Guardian of their word choice. “The word’s dramatic spike in usage caught our attention first.”
He added that, after “analysis,” they discovered that “a story started to emerge, revealing how vax sat at the center of our preoccupations this year.”
Specifically, the linguistic organization tracked the progression of COVIDP-19 vaccine vocab, from the usage of “vaccine distribution” in December 2020 to terms like “vaccine rollout” and “vaccine passport” becoming part of the global lexicon this past spring, the Guardian reported.
They found that “vax” was being used more frequently, across multiple languages and in a greater variety of contexts, including “fully vaxxed” and “vax cards.” Meanwhile, terms like “anti-vax” and “anti-vaxxers” also become more ubiquitous as anti-inoculation beliefs increasingly bled into the mainstream amid the pandemic.
A far cry from its purported first-recorded use in English in 1799, “vax” has also surfaced in unlikely places as well, including dating apps.
“The evidence was everywhere, from dating apps (vax 4 vax) and pent-up frustrations (hot vax summer) to academic calendars (vaxx to school) and bureaucratic operations (vax pass),” said Grathwohl.
“In monopolizing our discourse, it’s clear the language of vaccines is changing how we talk – and think – about public health, community and ourselves,” he added.
Of course, “vax” isn’t the Oxford English Dictionary’s first word of the year, which is “judged to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance,” per the site.
Past all-encompassing terms have included “climate emergency” for 2019 and “toxic” for the year prior. Meanwhile, the OED deemed the disastrous 2020 too difficult to sum up in a word, so they chose several encapsulating expressions, including “bushfires” and “lockdown.”