Corona Lingo

Origin of the word pandemic - from Greek pandemos "pertaining to all people; public, common, from pan- "all" and dēmos "people". How prophetic the origin has turned out to be!  The Corona pandemic has gripped the entire world. Each one of us is touched by the pandemic one way or another.

We have learnt and started using Corona lingo – words which have never been part of our active vocabulary. We are slowly limping back, but pandemic, Corona and COVID-19 have been strongly imprinted in our brain. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a host of new words that, in normal circumstances, only public health professionals knew and used. Specialized lingo, from epidemiology to social behavior contributed to the constantly expanding word index of daily life as corona lingo.

On March 16, the Merriam Webster dictionary announced a special update of its free online dictionary with about a dozen words related to the pandemic. At the top of the list was COVID-19. The term—a mash-up of corona virus disease 2019 – was created by the World Health Organization and unveiled on Feb. 11 at a news conference in Geneva.  COVID-19 went from nonexistent to defined and entered the Merriam in 34 days.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) followed suit in early April. “It is a consistent theme of lexicography that great social change brings great linguistic change,” wrote OED executive director Bernadette Paton, “and that has never been truer than in this current global crisis.” People have always been creative in coining new words, and more so in the bizarre times of the pandemic.

I have tried to put together a few of the words which are a part of the corona lingo.

Read also Corona Slang

* I thank https://www.dictionary.com/ for this post.        

         Asymptomatic - adjective 

(of a disease or other medical condition) presenting no symptoms or evidence of illness or abnormality

(of a person with a disease or other medical condition) experiencing no symptoms or evidence of illness or abnormality

contact tracing - noun

People in close contact with someone who is infected with a virus, are at higher risk of becoming infected themselves, and of potentially further infecting others. Closely watching these contacts after exposure to an infected person will help the contacts to get care and treatment, and will prevent further transmission of the virus. This monitoring process is called contact tracing.

flatten the curve - idiom

(during a disease outbreak) to use public health measures to achieve a more gradual increase and decrease in the number of new cases, spreading the same total number of cases over a longer period of time, as depicted by a gently sloping curved line on a graph.

   

  fomites - noun plural, singular fomes, fomite 

Surfaces, as clothing or door handles, that can become contaminated with pathogens when touched by the carrier of an infection, and can then transmit the pathogens to those who next touch the surfaces.

Frontliner

A frontliner is a frontline worker, especially in healthcare and other essential, often public-facing jobs.

 

Herd immunity- noun

the immunity or resistance to a particular infection that occurs in a group of people or animals when a very high percentage of individuals have been vaccinated or previously exposed to the infection.

 

Infodemic - noun

a massive amount of widely and rapidly circulating information about a particular crisis or controversial issue, consisting of a confusing combination of fact, falsehood, rumor, and opinion. The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. :

lockdown - noun

a security measure taken during an emergency to prevent people from leaving or entering a building or other location:

long-hauler - noun

A long-hauler is a person who suffers from symptoms of COVID-19 for longer than two weeks, and generally for several months. The experience of such persistent symptoms of COVID-19 are sometimes referred to as long COVID.

PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) - noun

personal protective equipment: specialized clothing or other wearable gear that minimizes one’s exposure to sources of illness or injury, and in medical contexts helps to inhibit the spread of infection to others.

quarantine - noun

Quarantine is used to keep someone who might have been exposed to COVID-19 away from others. Quarantine helps prevent spread of disease that can occur before a person knows they are sick or if they are infected with the virus without feeling symptoms. People in quarantine should stay home, separate themselves from others, monitor their health, and follow directions from their state or local health department.

 

social distancing  - noun

the practice of maintaining a safe or appropriate physical distance from other people, or the measures taken to reduce close physical contact, especially to slow the spread of a contagious illness or disease.

superspreader - noun

a person who spreads a contagious disease more easily and widely than the average infected person.

twindemic

Twindemic refers to the dual threat of a severe flu outbreak on top of the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall and winter of 2020.

 

With lots of hope and tons of prayers for 2021 to be ‘normal’ and not ‘new normal’…

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