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‘Virtually commuting’ to your ‘cloffice’?
New pandemic-related words could be added to our Dictionary for Learners
“Quarantine” was our word of 2020. In the year covid became a pandemic, the word was one of the most highly searched for words in the Cambridge Dictionary – the world’s most popular online dictionary for learners of English.
“The words that people search for reveal not just what is happening in the world, but what matters most to them in relation to those events,” says Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager.
The Cambridge Dictionary editors monitor a wide range of sources for the new words and meanings that could be added to the online dictionary. Every week our dictionary team ask people to vote on if potential new words should be added to the dictionary. Recent options indicate people continue to use words to invent new ways to describe the impact on their lives of the global pandemic. These include:
- cloffice noun [C]
UK /ˈklɒf.ɪs/ US /ˈklɑːf.ɪs/
a closet that has been turned into a small office space;
- virtual commute noun [C]
UK /ˌvɜː.tʃu.əl.kəˈmjuːt/ US /ˌvɝː.tʃu.əl.kəˈmjuːt/
a way for people who work from home to separate their working hours from their personal time more easily
- lockdown foot noun [U]
UK /ˌlɒk.daʊn.fʊt/ US /ˌlɑːk.daʊn.fʊt/
a condition resulting from someone having spent lockdown at home in bare feet or slippers, allowing their feet to change shape and making it difficult or painful to wear normal shoes again
The new words are unearthed from the Cambridge English Corpus – a multi-billion word database of spoken and written English. Researchers use the database to observe and track typical use of words as well as how language is changing. It makes sure word definitions in the Cambridge Dictionary are up to date and, most importantly, reflects how the words are being used in everyday life.
How people use language in the real world is constantly changing and evolving. In tracking how people were using quarantine in 2020, Cambridge Dictionary researchers discovered a new meaning emerging: a general period of time in which people are not allowed to leave their homes or travel freely, so that they do not catch or spread a disease. This new sense of quarantine has now been added to the Cambridge Dictionary.
Findings from the Cambridge Learner Corpus also helps us develop our English language learning materials. As we understand where learners are statistically more likely to encounter difficulties we can tell learners and teachers what to look out for. Our materials for secondary school age students, THiNK, show our Corpus data in action in the 'Get it right' sections in this series.
Using the Cambridge English Corpus in our products means we teach the language that learners will encounter in their everyday lives – language that’s useful, current and helps them to sound natural when they speak and write.
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