全球新冠感染病例已经突破200万例。从经济到社会层面，这场疫情给世界带来的长久影响还难以准确评估，但几个月来，“新冠肺炎”已经成为最受关注的话题。

据《卫报》报道，今年4月，《牛津英语词典》收录了一批新冠肺炎疫情流行用语《英语词典》打破惯例收录新词！这些新冠肺炎“流行用语”你都会吗？（中英双语），“在家办公”、“社交距离”和“自我隔离”等词汇都被纳入其中——

With terms such as WFH, social distancing and self-isolation now in common parlance, the Oxford English Dictionary has made an extraordinary update to include COVID-19 and words related to the pandemic in its definitive record of the English language.

如今，随着居家办公（WFH: work from home）、社交隔离和自我隔离等词汇成了日常用语，《牛津英语词典》进行了一次非同寻常的更新，将新型冠状病毒肺炎以及与这一流行病相关的词汇收录进其权威英语语料库中。

The dictionary’s executive editor Bernadette Paton said that it was “a rare experience for lexicographers to observe an exponential rise in usage of a single word in a very short period of time, and for that word to come overwhelmingly to dominate the global discourse, even to the exclusion of most other topics”.”

《牛津英语词典》执行主编伯纳黛特·帕顿表示英语网络缩略语，“对于词典编纂者而言，一个单词的使用频率在极短时间内呈现指数式的增长，并在国际舆论中压倒性地占据支配地位，甚至使得其他大多数话题不再被讨论，这是十分罕见的。”

COVID-19 has done that, and has thus been added as a new entry in the OED, where it is described as “an acute respiratory illness in humans caused by a coronavirus, which is capable of producing severe symptoms and death, esp. in the elderly and others with underlying health conditions”.

新冠肺炎就是这样一个词，并因此被收录进了《牛津英语词典》。在字典里，它的定义是“一种由冠状病毒引起的急性人类呼吸道疾病，能够引起重症甚至死亡英语网络缩略语，对于老年人和基础病患者尤其如此”。

“As something of a departure, this update comes outside of our usual quarterly publication cycle,” said Paton. “But these are extraordinary times, and OED lexicographers, who like many others are all working from home … are tracking the development of the language of the pandemic and offering a linguistic and historical context to their usage.”

帕顿说：“这算是破了例，这次更新没有按照我们以往的周期性季度更新进行。但现在是非常时期，《牛津英语词典》的编纂者和其他许多人一样，只能居家办公，我们在跟踪新冠肺炎疫情期间语言的发展，并为这些词汇的用法提供语言学和历史语境。”

The OED’s analysis of more than 8bn words of online news stories found that coronavirus and COVID-19, a shortening of coronavirus disease 2019, are now dominating global discourse. While back in December, words such as Brexit, impeachment and climate dominated news, by January, coronavirus was seeing significant use alongside current affairs terms such as bushfire, koala, Iraqi, locust and assassination. By March every single word in the OED’s top 20 list of keywords was related to coronavirus.

通过分析超过80多亿个单词的线上新闻报道，《牛津英语词典》发现冠状病毒和新冠肺炎（即2019新冠肺炎病毒病的缩写）两个词正主导着全球舆论。在去年12月，在新闻中占据支配地位的是英国脱欧、弹劾以及气候。到了1月，冠状病毒一词被高频使用，其他一些与时事相关的高频术语还有林区大火、考拉、伊拉克人、蝗虫以及暗杀。到了3月，《牛津英语词典》列出的20个最关键词汇中上的么一个单词都与冠状病毒相关。

“In January, the words mainly relate to naming and describing the virus: coronavirus, SARS, virus, human-to-human, respiratory, flu-like,” said the OED in an analysis. “By March, the keywords reflect the social impact of the virus, and issues surrounding the medical response: social distancing, self-isolation and self-quarantine, lockdown, non-essential (as in non-essential travel), and postpone are all especially frequent, as are PPE and ventilator.”

《牛津英语词典》在一份分析报告中写道：“1月的高频词汇主要与病毒的命名和描述相关，如冠状病毒、非典、病毒、人传人、呼吸系统、流感样。到了3月，这些关键词反映出该病毒的社会影响，以及与医疗应对相关的问题：社交隔离、自我隔离、封城、非必要的（出现在“非必要的旅行”一词中）、推迟、个人防护装备以及呼吸机的使用尤为频繁。”

The OED’s lexicographers have noticed a rise in the use of specialist medical terms and new acronyms, such as WFH and PPE. The first noted usage of working from home was in 1995, but Paton notes that “the abbreviation was known to very few before it became a way of life for so many of us”. The abbreviation PPE, for personal protective equipment, dates back to 1977 but was “formerly probably restricted to healthcare and emergency professionals”.

《牛津英语词典》的编纂者注意到，专业医疗术语和新首字母缩略词的使用有所上升，如居家办公和个人防护装备。1995年，人们首次注意到在家办公的用法，但帕顿指出，“在居家办公成为我们许多人的生活方式之前，很少有人知道这个缩写”。个人防护用品的缩写PPE可以追溯到1977年，但“以前可能只有医护和急救专业人员使用”。

Social distancing, first used in 1957, “was originally an attitude rather than a physical term, referring to an aloofness or a deliberate attempt to distance oneself from others socially. Now we all understand it as keeping a physical distance between ourselves and others to avoid infection,” wrote Paton.

社交隔离一词于1957年首次被使用。帕顿写道，“（这个词）最早指的是一种态度，而非一种行为，其意思是出于冷漠或者特定目的而使自己与社会保持距离。如今英语网络缩略语，我们都把该词理解为使我们自己和其他人之间保持身体上的距离英语网络缩略语，从而防止感染。”

Previous pandemics have also given rise to new vocabulary. Usage of “pestilence”, or “a fatal epidemic or disease”, first appears in 1382, not long after the bubonic plague peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. The adjective “self-quarantined” was first used in 1878 to describe the actions of the villagers of Eyam in the 17th century, who isolated themselves to prevent the second wave of “Black Death” from spreading to surrounding villages.

此前的大流行病也曾催生过新的词汇。“瘟疫”一词或“一种致命的传染病或疾病“这种说法首次出现在1382年，就在1327年至1351年欧洲鼠疫达到高峰期不久。形容词“自我隔离的”于1878年被首次使用，该词被用于描述17世纪英国伊姆村民的行为，他们将自己隔离起来，来防止第二波“黑死病”蔓延到周围村庄。

“It is a consistent theme of lexicography that great social change brings great linguistic change, and that has never been truer than in this current global crisis,” wrote Paton.

帕顿写道：“社会的剧变会带来语言的剧变，这是词典编纂中的一个永恒主题。在当下的这场全球性危机中，这一点从未如此真实。”

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