If you had to sum up Australia’s experience of 2020 in one word, which would you choose?
The Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) has mulled over this question, and come up with what we think is the perfect word of the year for 2020: Iso.
The ANDC officially defines iso as:
“self-isolation; the act of remaining apart from others as a way to limit the spread of an infectious disease, especially as a public health measure.”
And we think it’s a worthy winner – after all, how many times you’ve used or heard ‘iso’ this year?
Other words to make the shortlist included ‘COVID-normal’, ‘bubble’ (a reference to the expression COVID-bubble), ‘black summer’ (from the bushfires earlier this year) and ‘driveway’ (another way to refer to the driveway ANZAC services).
“Our fondness for abbreviating words in Australia, and a natural human inclination to make the unknown and scary familiar, quickly saw the descriptive term ‘self-isolation’ shortened to ‘iso’ in March this year,” said Senior Researcher Mark Gwynn.
“Not only is ‘iso’ distinctively Australian in usage, it has also been linguistically productive by combining with other words to form compounds such as iso-baking, iso-cut and iso-fashion.”
We’d say it’s iso-appropriate.
