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Thursday, January 6, 2022

M-W 2021 Word of the Year: Vaccine

I guess that should not be a surprise.  Vaccine is the Word-of-the-Year chosen by Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  According to Merriam-Webster the word “vaccine” shot up in usage this year and defined the year as a word, driven by two phenomena: the savior of society from the coronavirus (or Covid-19, whichever term you prefer for the agent of the pandemic) and the politics associated with vaccination, either from those who embraced vaccination and those who resisted.  It is true.  The word “vaccine” was on our lips and in our ears throughout the year. 

First a definition.  


1a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as

 

aan antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)trivalent influenza vaccineoral polio vaccineMany vaccines are made from the virus itself, either weakened or killed, which will induce antibodies to bind and kill a live virus. Measles vaccines are just that, weakened (or attenuated) measles viruses.— Ann Finkbeiner et al.… a tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine might be recommended for wound management in a pregnant woman if [greater than or equal to] 5 years have elapsed … .— Mark Sawyer et al.In addition the subunit used in a vaccine must be carefully chosen, because not all components of a pathogen represent beneficial immunological targets.— Thomas J. Matthews and Dani P. Bolognesi

 

ba preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)… Moderna's coronavirus vaccine … works by injecting a small piece of mRNA from the coronavirus that codes for the virus' spike protein. … mRNA vaccine spurs the body to produce the spike protein internally. That, in turn, triggers an immune response.— Susie Neilson et al.The revolutionary messenger RNA vaccines that are now available have been over a decade in development. … Messenger RNA enters the cell cytoplasm and produces protein from the spike of the Covid-19 virus.— Thomas F. CozzaViral vector vaccines, another recent type of vaccine, are similar to DNA and RNA vaccines, but the virus's genetic information is housed in an attenuated virus (unrelated to the disease-causing virus) that helps to promote host cell fusion and entry.— Priya Kaur

NOTE: Vaccines may contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) designed to enhance the strength and duration of the body's immune response.

2a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseasesThe U.S. Army is also testing a ricin vaccine and has reported success in mice.— Sue Goetinck Ambrose… many of the most promising new cancer vaccines use dendritic cells to train the immune system to recognize tumor cells.— Patrick Barry

Notice that 1b sub definition: “a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance…”  Those are the new vaccines addressing Covid-19 that have been in controversy.  That definition of vaccine was updated this year to include that sub definition.  Until this year with these Covid vaccines I had no idea of this concept, but as I understand it these forms of vaccines have been in development for a while.  In their announcement for Word-of-the-Year, Merriam-Webster described the definition change and the controversy surrounding the word:

 

In everyday use, words are useful tools that communicate assertions, ideas, aspirations, and uncertainties. But they can also become vehicles for ideological conflict.

 

This is what happened to vaccine in 2021. The promising medical solution to the pandemic that upended our lives in 2020 also became a political argument and source of division. The biggest science story of our time quickly became the biggest debate in our country, and the word at the center of both stories is vaccine.

 

Hopes for cures and treatments of COVID-19 began as soon as the disease began to spread. Research into a new kind of vaccine containing messenger RNA, or mRNA, genetic material rather than an inactivated form of the virus was accelerated. After decades of studies conducted for application to diseases such as influenza, Ebola, and rabies, this new type of mRNA vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus was rapidly developed, tested, and manufactured for broad use, with the first doses being administered in the U.S. in December 2020.

 

The use of a vaccine that triggers an immune response in an entirely new way required that Merriam-Webster revise and expand its entry for the word, which the company did in May. The definition, which formerly read “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease,” was replaced with the following:

So did you choose to get vaccinated?  Were you forced to get vaccinated?  Or have you been rebellious and fought to be exempt?  From what I read, vaccines have been lifesaving.  The hospitals are full of the unvaccinated.  We at my family have all chosen to be vaccinated.  I wrote a post about a number of friends who succumbed to the virus, “Covid-19, My New York Experience” before the vaccines.  Since then I had one of my closest friends, Joe, pass away as well, but Joe was vaccinated.  But Joe was rather vulnerable given all his other health issues. 

Here’s a video on the M-W Word of the Year. 

 


So how did vaccine register so high in Merriam-Webster’s awareness?  They explain from their announcement:

 

Interest in the definition of this word was intense in the past year: lookups for vaccine increased 601% year-over-year from 2020. But interest in the word has been high since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with much discussion of the funding, development, testing, and ultimate distribution of the vaccines occurring in 2020. The prominence of the word vaccine in our lives in this era becomes even more starkly clear when we compare 2021 to 2019, a period in which lookups for the word increased 1048%.

 

Lookups of vaccine, already very high all year, jumped by 535% in August, long after discussions about vaccines began taking place in the press and widespread distribution in parts of the world were well underway. A number of stories in August show that discussions about policy, approval, and vaccination rates—rather than the vaccine itself—sent people to the dictionary. During this period, New York and California instituted vaccine mandates for health care workers; a federal mandate was announced for nursing home staff; an announcement of plans for booster shots for the general public in the U.S. prompted condemnations of inequities in vaccine distribution; and full FDA approval for Pfizer’s vaccine was granted.

 

This new higher rate of lookups since August has remained stable throughout the late fall, showing not just a very high interest in vaccine, but one that started high and grew during the course of 2021.

Other words which came up high on their list in 2021: Insurrection, Perseverance, Woke, Nomad, Infrastructure, Cicada, Murraya, Cisgender, Guardian, and Meta.  Their announcement goes through each one as to why it had heightened searches this year.  I guessed why for several but was surprised for the others. 

I leave you with one more video on the Word-of-the-Year, one that is more visual, from Asianet Newsable.



 

So if 2020’s Word-of-the-Year was “pandemic,” and 2021’s was “vaccine,” will 2022’s be “booster”?  Seems like the trend.

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