Jottings receiving the vaccine said one , while another ( brilliantly ) termed the event “ The Taming of the Flu .” The BBC went for “ All ’ s well that ends well ,” while someone suggested the patient should be named “ The Gentleman of Corona .” Someone even alleged that the second person to get the vaccine was actually Christopher Marlowe , but that William Shakespeare took all the credit .
What ’ s in name ?
The year 2020 was a year of lockdown and wokeness , of PPE , BLM and R numbers , and of bubbles , covidiots and anti-vaxxers . It was also a year in which the English language expanded to give names to various pandemicrelated activities , as well as giving new meanings to existing words .
The problem for the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries was then to choose just one word to sum up the whole miserable 12 months . In the end , they gave up and , after what they described as an “ unprecedented ” period , their annual “ Word of The Year ” has been expanded into a list of almost 50 words , phrases and abbreviations now in common circulation .
“ 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other ,” according to Casper Grathwohl , the president of Oxford Dictionaries , who added , “ I ’ ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we ’ ve just had .”
Our favourites include Blursday ( a day of the week which is indistinguishable from any other ), doomscroll ( to scroll through social media or news feeds which relate bad news ), sanny ( Aussie slang for a hand sanitiser ) and Zoombomb ( to infiltrate video conference calls in order to post violent , pornographic , or offensive content ).
Meanwhile , Labour-run Birmingham City Council has been accused of “ virtue signalling ” after it decided to give six new streets names which are considered to be “ woke .” The roads in the Perry Barr district are to be called Diversity Grove , Equality Road , Destiny Road , Inspire Avenue , Respect Way and Humanity Close . ( Yes , really .)
The titles were decided by a panel of judges after local people were invited to submit suggestions but Brummies have been taking to social media to air their “ embarrassment ” at the choices . One wrote , “ You ’ ve missed ‘ Virtual
Signalling Traffic Lights ,’” while others described the names as , “ a series of banal buzz words ,” and “ patronising beyond belief .”
The new roads will serve over 1,000 homes which are being built on land formerly belonging to Birmingham City University and critics say that the streets should have been named after the city ’ s great sports heroes or after important names in its multi-cultural community .
Perhaps this Tweet summed up the mood : “ I ’ m calling it now . Someone ’ s going to put a D at the end of Humanity Close ...”
Funny peculiar
In the old days , parents tended to get a letter from their child ’ s school if the little darling had produced toxic smells in the chemistry lab or done something unspeakable behind the bike sheds . But the message received by parents at a school in France in November touched on another problem altogether .
A notice outside the school in Avignon depicts a child being thrown into the
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