NEOLOGISMS DURING THE CORONA CRISIS

Abstract

The paper deals with neologisms created during the Corona crisis. It traces the linguistic ways in which they were formed. Corona crisis changed people’s lives in many ways. As a result, new phrases entered everyday life. According to Algeo (1998), there are six “basic etymological sources for new words: creating, borrowing, combining, shortening, blending, and shifting” (Algeo 1998: 3). The neologisms that appeared during the pandemic are formed in three different ways: by affixation, by blending, by giving  a new meaning to a word or phrase that already exists, or by created new coinages that did not used to exist before. Neologisms created by affixation include words like covidise, covidee (see Aleksandrova 2021), coronate. Blending is the source for the creation of coinages such as coronagate (a leak of scandalous information concerning a possible cure for the Corona virus), quarantini (any drink consumed in isolation during the corona crisis), codiDate (dating someone during the corona crisis), quaranteams (teams working in the conditions defined by the Corona crisis), coronacation (a vacation during the corona pandemic), lexit ( an exit from the lock down), covexit (an exit from the covid pandemic), coronials (children conceived and/or born during the corona crisis), covidivorce (divorce during the corona crisis, mainly due to the high levels of stress and tension  caused by isolation).  Neologisms during the Corona crisis can also be formed by copying the pattern in which one neologism was coined and applying it to the new coinage, as is the case with Coronagate.  Apart from the abovementioned, completely new coinages were created: lock-down, social distancing, self-quarantine, Blursday, to name but a few.

When these neologisms become established, a shift in their meaning is observed. The initial meaning develops further and hence the new coinage is found to be used with several meanings. An example of such cases is the newly created word quarantini. The urban dictionary defines quarantini as “A strong alcoholic beverage that is made when people are quarantined, or otherwise locked up or trapped in a location for an extended period of time. Traditionally made up of vodka, whiskey, or everclear. Must include some sort of hard liqueur. (urbandictionary.com)”. In another article, quarantini is said to be “an easy Lemon Honey Martini with emergency vitamin C! (https://thenovicechefblog.com/quarantini)”, the text being accompanied by a photograph showing a cocktail glass and a  Vitamin C sachet. It can be suggested, therefore, that that the presence of variation in the meaning of a neologism is a marker of its relative stability. Some of the neologisms created during the corona crisis seem to be used synonymously in certain contexts, as is the case with quarantine and lock-down.