♪Words of an unprecedented year – 絞りきれなかった2020年の言葉

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

Recently, I read an article from the Guardian which was about the Oxford English Dictionary being unable to choose one single word as the word of the year for 2020. Instead, the dictionary announced its words of an "unprecedented" year.

It goes without saying that the list includes a log of coronavirus-related words and phrases, including "pandemic", "lockdown", "shelter-in-place", "face masks" and "key workers".

I found some interesting numbers in the article. One example is the use of the word "pandemic" has increased in frequency by more than 57,000% this year compared with 2019. Likewise, the phrase "following the science" has also increased in use by more than 1000%.

Other words in working habits also seen tremendous growth in use since March, according to the article, including remote and remotely, workation and staycation.

Now, would you like to try a quiz? I'll give you three options, please listen carefully and choose the one that is CORRECT. Ready?

As the word of the year for 2020, the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen:

1. unprecedented

2. coronavirus

3. multiple words as words of an unprecedented year