Oxford Languages, creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, chose “vax” as its 2021 Word of the Year. “When our lexicographers began examining our English corpus data, vax quickly became clear to be a particularly striking term. Until this year, a relatively rare word in our corpus was seen 72 times more frequently by September than in the same period last year,” Oxford Languages said in a statement. said.
Looking at Google Trends, it can be seen that “vax” as a search term has seen a huge increase in popularity this year compared to 2019 and 2020.
“For lexicographers, it’s rare for a single topic to impact language so dramatically and become a critical part of our daily communication in such a short time,” said the accompanying report, “A report on the language of vaccines.”
Spelling of the term varies, the report says: 89 percent use the spelling “vax”, while the spelling “vaxx” makes up 11 percent. But for inflected forms of the word, such as “vaxxed,” the situation is reversed, with a single “x” only making up 13 percent, while 87 percent have two x’s.
Oddly enough, the term “anti-vax” precedes the term “vax” alone by about a century, the report explains. The use of the term “vax” alone dates back to the 1980s, while “anti-vax” as a shortened version of “anti-vaccine” was first recorded in 1898.
In fact, Edward Jenner, the architect of the first vaccine, wrote in a letter written in 1812, “The anti-vaccine [anti-vax] newspapers are attacking me with all they can [. . . ]” in the papers.
On May 14, 1796, Jenner inoculated a young boy named James Phipps with the pus of a milkmaid infected with cowpox. This made Phipps immune to the much more deadly smallpox.
This experiment with cowpox is actually what gives vaccines its name. The English word “vaccine” is derived from “vaccine” and the Latin word “vacca” meaning cow. . .
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