Hi everyone! Thank you for tuning in to Time for English.

Dictionary.com named the word "pandemic" its Word of the Year. Interestingly, its users' choice was different. They chose the word "unprecedented" as the People's Choice 2020 Word of the Year.

Are you familiar with the word? If something is unprecedented, it has never happened or existed before. It's unexampled, unparalleled, unmatched, or very unusual.

Oftentimes we describe something such as a movie as unprecedented in order to emphasize that it's extremely great in quality, amount or scale.

Unfortunately, that's not the case here. Almost every week we see something unprecedented, that is not exactly welcomed. And ironically, the word is so often used that it's become a cliché now.

Personally, I'm preparing for an unprecedented New Year's Eve as I won't be able to get together with my mother, my sister and her daughter and their dog this year.

Anyhow, this will be the last update of 2020. And Kaori and I would like to thank you for staying with us and supporting us throughout the year. Thank you so much. We wish you a quiet, but happy, healthy, brand new year.