Word of the year: pandemic

“大流行病”当选年度词汇

For the first time, two US dictionary companies on Monday declared the same word, their word of the year: "pandemic".

11月30日，两家美国词典公司宣布了同一个年度词汇“大流行病”，这还是有史以来首次。

Pandemic "probably isn't a big shock", said Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster.

韦氏词典的特邀编辑皮特·索科洛夫斯基说，大流行病（当选年度词汇）“并不意外”。

"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."

“重大新闻报道往往包含一个与该新闻相关的术语，而在此次疫情中，‘大流行病’不只是一个术语，而是具有了更普遍的意义。它很可能会成为将来我们指代这段时期的词语。”

John Kelly, senior research editor at Dictionary.com, said searches for "pandemic" spiked more than 13,500% on March 11, the day the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of the novel coronavirus a global health emergency.

Dictionary.com的高级调研编辑约翰·凯利表示，世界卫生组织在3月11日宣布新冠疫情成为全球卫生紧急事件后，"大流行病"一词的搜索量在当天暴增超13500%。

The spike, he said, was "massive, but even more telling is how high has sustained significant search volumes throughout the entire year".

他说，搜索量涨幅固然很高，但更能说明问题的是该词在全年都保持着极高的搜索量。