Covidiots? Quarantinis?

Linguist explains how COVID-19 has

infected our language

Pandemic has led to the creation of more than 1,000 new words, says Tony Thorne
CBC Radio · Posted: Apr 22, 2020 2:30 PM ET | Last Updated: April 22, 2020

The term 'quarantini' can refer to any cocktail mixed to congratulate yourself on another day working
from home in the lockdown. 

Are you going to a Zoom party later, to have a quarantini with friends during locktail hour?
Are those words brand new to you, like covidiot, coronallusional or drivecation? You probably
know what PPE means, but did you know that three months ago?
The upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 1,000 new words, or
neologisms, according to Tony Thorne, a language consultant at King's College, London.
Thorne spoke to  The Current's  Matt Galloway about the "coronaspeak" he's been cataloguing.
Here is part of their conversation.
In Australia they talk about an isobar. That's where your quarantini is stocked- Tony Thorne

Why is it there are so many new slang words during this pandemic? Is it just because
people have time on their hands to work things up?

That's certainly part of it. But whenever you have a big social upheaval — think of the
recession, think of ... Brexit, think of war time, for example ... the process of generating new
language goes into acceleration, goes into overdrive. More and more new language is needed
and invented in these completely new situations.

How many words have we created so far?

I've collected more than a thousand new terms — both technical, medical language and
language being generated by people under lockdown.
But you've got to be careful because journalists tend to invent a lot of language and then claim
that this is circulating. I've got around a thousand that I'm quite sure are authentic examples of
new language.

What are some of your favourites?

It's hard to have a favourite, but if I'm really honest, I guess my two favourites are quarantini
and locktail hour. Because this is at the end of the day when we feel we're entitled to have a
cocktail.
There's a lot of silly words. Covidiot, morona — somebody behaving stupidly. Coronallusional,
when your thinking starts getting disordered and you get confused.
The Australians are very good at slang. So we've got ISO for self-isolation. But also in Australia
they talk about an isobar. That's where your quarantini is stocked. Isodesk is the workplace
you've improvised to look good on video, in confinement.
And drivecation, I like. I think it may be Canadian. It's having a holiday in your motorhome, in
your own driveway.

So you're not leaving anywhere, you just get in the motorhome and stay there and look
out the window?

Yeah, yeah. And drink cocktails.

You drink too many cocktails or have too much of the sourdough bread that you are
making in quarantine, and you could put on what? The covid-fifteen or the covid-
nineteen?

Covid-nineteen, yeah, that's an American term for the 19 pounds of extra body weight that
you're supposed to accrue. I've got a feeling it could be even more than that in my case.

Are there any that you don't particularly like but they are circulating?

Zoom-bombing is a bad thing. This is when people hijack and interrupt video conferencing. 
Corona trolls, you know, people who take advantage of all the internet traffic in order to create
bad content. So these are some of the negative aspects, I suppose. 

Terms like personal protective equipment are now 'on the tip of our tongue,' Thorne said. 

You also mentioned medical terminology that we're all using right now. Tell me a little
bit about some of that.
We've had to come to terms with a whole lot of language, which normal people wouldn't have
had to use. Things like ventilation, intubation, PPE — personal protective equipment —
suddenly become a huge issue, and it's on the tip of our tongue. 

The new coronaspeak, I would say, is coming from two directions. It's the official government
and medical language of confinement and lockdown. And then ordinary people, if you like, are
sort of fighting back. They're filling the gaps in the official narrative with their own inventions,
describing their own private environments.

How does something like this shape the English language in the long term?

At the moment we're all in a state of semi-paralysis; we don't know how long this is going to go
on. But previously, the language of wartime, some of it disappears, some of it subsides when
the war's over. The language of the recession, of finance and economics, some of it we don't
use anymore once we think we're out of recession.
But I think that this is such a big social upheaval and we're all concerned — for once
everybody's involved. I think some of this language: the idea of medicalizing the way we speak,
for example, the idea of talking about our personal space, is going to stay with us.