The New Words We Needed For 2021 (And Some Old Ones)

One way to look back on a year is by taking a close look at the words that were called to occasion by, this year, an attempt to overturn an election, and a pandemic.

On Today's Show:
Ben Zimmer, linguist, a lexicographer, the language columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, co-host of the Slate podcast ‘Spectacular Vernacular,’ and chair of the American Dialect Society New Words Committee and oversees their word-of-the-year selection process, talks about some of the words with special significance in 2021. Merriam-Webster picked “Vaccine”, Oxford Languages picked “Vax” and dictionary.com went with “Allyship."

NOTE: This segment was taken from Brian's 12/28 live show. As part of our year-end coverage, we're approaching politics from some fun angles, including tomorrow's 'New Quiz.'