“Often the big news story has a technical word that’s associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general.

“It’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period in the future,” he said.

The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was designated a pandemic.

But it started to trend up on Merriam-Webster.com as early January and again in February when the first US deaths and outbreaks on cruise ships occurred.

On March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, lookups on the site for pandemic spiked hugely.

Site interest for the word has remained significantly high through the year, Sokolowski said.

By huge, Sokolowski means searches for pandemic on March 11 were 115,806% higher than lookups experienced on the same date last year.

Pandemic, with roots in Latin and Greek, is a combination of “pan,” for all, and “demos,” for people or population.

The latter is the same root of “democracy,” Sokolowski noted.

The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.

That was after the plagues of the Middle Ages, Sokolowski said.

He attributes the lookup traffic for pandemic not entirely to searchers who didn’t know what it meant but also to those on the hunt for more detail, or for inspiration or comfort.

“We see that the word love is looked up around Valentine’s Day and the word cornucopia is looked up at Thanksgiving,” Sokolowski said.

“We see a word like surreal spiking when a moment of national tragedy or shock occurs. It’s the idea of dictionaries being the beginning of putting your thoughts in order.”

Merriam-Webster acted quickly in March to add and update entries on its site for words related to the pandemic.

While “coronavirus” had been in the dictionary for decades, “COVID-19” was coined in February.

Thirty-four days later, Merriam-Webster had it up online, along with a couple dozen other entries that were revised to reflect the health emergency

Source – https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/

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She has been the least public first lady in decades, and English is not her native language, but the principal sin of this elegant former fashion model is that she’s married to…him. In the runup to Tuesday night’s appearance, journalists kept bringing up her 2016 address, in which a mishap caused her staff to plagiarize some passages from an old Michelle Obama speech.

POMPEO BREAKS DIPLOMATIC TRADITION WITH CONVENTION SPEECH, TOUTS TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA

Before a small audience in the revamped garden, Melania Trump did what virtually no other speaker had: acknowledge the impact of the coronavirus and express sympathy for its victims.

Since March, she said, “our lives have changed drastically” because of “the invisible enemy.” She offered sympathy and prayers for those who have lost a loved one or are suffering, and said “Donald will not rest” until an effective treatment is found. That was no small thing at a convention that talked about the pandemic in the past tense, when it was talked about at all. It wasn’t just cheerleading. And she declined to use her time “to attack the other side.”

While not a natural orator, the first lady said she was humbled by coming here from a communist country and living the American dream. Despite “negative or false media headlines,” she said, the president won’t lose focus on helping the country. She also talked about Africa, drug addiction, violence and motherhood. It was, in short, a plain-spoken and compassionate talk.

While some pundits on Twitter credited Melania with speaking frankly about the virus, others questioned what she sees in her husband, ridiculed her outfit or laughed at her delivery. One called it “a Seinfeld speech…about nothing.”

Her words even won over some of the TV pundits, from CNN’s Dana Bash to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who said “that’s the first time in two days we have had even a straightforward expression of sympathy.” Fox’s Dana Perino said “she lights up the room.” But Joy Reid complained about using the White House as a backdrop.

Tuesday’s proceedings, heavy on family members (including Eric and Tiffany), was low on celebrity wattage. The party trotted out plenty of average citizens, from a Wisconsin dairy farmer to a Maine lobsterman, who like Trump. It was a lower-key evening that sought to soften the GOP’s image and strengthen its connection to small business owners, with remarkably little mention of the coronavirus or the 30 million unemployed. In fact, Larry Kudlow essentially talked about the pandemic in the past tense.

The first night of the virtual GOP show drew about 16 million TV viewers, compared to 19 million for the Democrats’ first night. The number was about 30 percent lower than four years ago, similar to the Dem dropoff. And nearly half of the live audience (7 million) watched on Fox News, compared with MSNBC as the ratings leader for the Democrats–suggesting these convention programs have little cross-party appeal.

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