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Next slide please: The pandemic phrases we’ve grown to love (and hate) over the past year

As we mark a year since the national lockdown was first announced, Sean O’Grady takes a look at some of the words and phrases that have been coined or made a resurgence in the past 12 months

Tuesday 23 March 2021 14:25 GMT
Comments

It’s been a year, one where so much has changed, and all too often for the worse. Even the language we use has been infected, to the point now where a stressful day spent Zooming, WFH and trying to placate bored kids can be enlivened by playing a game of Covid bingo. See how many of these now-familiar words and unprecedentedly common, indeed viral, phrases you encounter as you try to adapt to the new normal...

Unprecedented. Rightly this was the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year for 2020, because everything was, is, and will be unprecedented as a result of the pandemic. Obviously.

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