【51Talk双语阅读2】新冠肺炎疫情相关词汇进入牛津英语词典新冠肺炎疫情相关词汇进入牛津英语词典 语言的发展，并为其词汇的用法提供语言和历史背景。 语言的发展，并为其词汇的用法提供语言和历史背景。新冠肺炎疫情相关词汇进入牛津英语词典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.随着“ WFH”（work from home ，在家办公） 、“保持社交距离”和“自我隔离”等词汇 成为常用词，牛津英语词典 进行了一次非常规更新， 将新冠肺炎疫情相关词汇纳入其中。The dictionarys 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 global discourse, even to the exclusion of most other topics.牛津英语词典执行编辑伯纳黛特帕顿说： “在很短的时间内观察到一个词汇的使用量呈 指数级上升， 并压倒性地主导全球语言趋势， 甚至让大多数其他话题毫无容身之地， 这对词 典编纂者来说非常罕见。”Covid-19 has done that, and has thus been added as a new entry in the OED, whereit 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，也由此成为牛津英语词典中新增加的一个词条，其定义 为“一种由冠状病毒引起的人类急性呼吸道疾病， 能产生严重的症状， 致人死亡， 特别是对 老年人和有其他潜在健康问题的人群。”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：“这次更新有些不同，它不在我们通常的季度发布周期。但现在是非常时期， 牛津 英语词典 的编纂者们和其他许多人一样， 都是在家工作， 他们正在追踪新冠肺炎疫情时期The OEDs analysis of more than 8bn words of online news stories found thatcoronavirusandCovid-19,a shortening of coronavirusdiseasexxxx, are nowdominatingglobaldiscourse. While back in December,wordssuch asBrexit,impeachmentandclimatedominated news, by January,coronavirus wasseeingsignificant use alongside current affairs terms such as bushfire, koala, Iraqi, locustand assassination. By March every single word in the OEDs top 20 list of keywordswas related to coronavirus.牛津英语词典 分析了包含 80 多亿个词汇的网络新闻， 发现冠状病毒和 Covid-19 （ xxxx 年新冠肺炎的缩写）现在主导着全球的讨论。去年 12 月，“英国脱欧”、“弹劾”、“气 候”等词汇占据了新闻头条， 而到了今年 1 月，“冠状病毒”与“丛林大火”、 “考拉”、 “伊拉克”、 “蝗虫”、 “暗杀”等时事词汇一起被大量使用。今年 3 月，牛津英语词典 列出的 20 个最关键词汇中的每一个单词都与冠状病毒有关。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. ByMarch, the keywords reflect the social impact of the virus, and issues surroundingthe 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 在分析中写道：“ 1 月的高频词主要与病毒的命名和描述有关： 冠状病毒、 非典、病毒、人传人、呼吸系统、流感样。到了 3 月，这些关键词反映了新冠病毒的社会影 响，以及医疗应对相关问题： 保持社交距离、 自我隔离、 封锁、非必要的（如非必要的旅行） 、 推迟、个人防护用品和呼吸机等词汇的使用都特别频繁。The OEDs 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们注意到，越来越多的人开始使用专业医学术语和新的缩写词， 比如 WFH （在家办公）和 PPE（个人防护用品） 。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“以前可能仅限于医护和急救专 业人员使用”。Social distancing, first used in 1957, was originally an attitude rather than a physicalterm, 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.“保持社交距离”这种说法最早出现于 1957 年，“最初是一种态度，而不是一个描述身体 距离的术语，指的是一种超然的态度，或者在社交上故意疏远他人。现在我们都明白， 这是 为了避免感染而与他人保持身体上的距离”，帕顿写道。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-quarantinedwas first used in 1878 to describe the actions of the villagers of Eyam in the 17thcentury, who isolated themselves to prevent the second wave of Black Death fromspreading to surrounding villages.以前的疾病大流行也产生过新的词汇。“瘟疫（尤指鼠疫） ”或“一种致命的流行病或疾病” 这种说法首次出现在 1382 年，就在欧洲黑死病于 1347 年至 1351 年达到顶峰后不久。形 容词“自我隔离的”在 1878 年首次被用来描述 17 世纪埃亚姆村村民的行为，他们将自己 隔离起来，以防止第二波黑死病蔓延到周围的村庄。It is a consistent theme of lexicography that great social change brings greatlinguistic change, and th