The New Words We Needed For 2021 (And Some Old Ones)

One way to look back on a year is by taking a close look at the words that were called to occasion by, this year, an attempt to overturn an election, and a pandemic. On Today's Show:Ben Zimmer, linguist, a lexicographer, the language columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, co-host of the Slate podcast ‘Spectacular Vernacular,’ and chair of the American Dialect Society New Words Committee and oversees their word-of-the-year selection process, talks about some of the words with special significance in 2021. Merriam-Webster picked “Vaccine”, Oxford Languages picked “Vax” and dictionary.com went with “Allyship." NOTE: This segment was taken from Brian's 12/28 live show. As part of our year-end coverage, we're approaching politics from some fun angles, including tomorrow's 'New Quiz.' Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.