Merriam-Webster Announces the Top Word of 2020

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As we start to wind down 2020, Merriam-Webster has revealed their top word for this year, and not surprisingly the word has everything to do with the trials and tribulations we have all faced thanks to COVID-19.
According to the Associated Press, most people won’t be shocked to find out “Pandemic” is Merriam-Webster’s top word for 2020.
“Often the big news story has a technical word that’s associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general. It’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period in the future,” Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told the Associated Press
Sokolowski told the AP that searches for “pandemic” on March 11th (the date when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a global pandemic) was 115,806% higher than the same date in 2019.
According to the Associated Press, quarantine, coronavirus, asymptomatic, mamba, Kraken, defund, antebellum, irregardless, icon, schadenfreude, and malarkey were also runners up based on lookup spikes around certain events.