While we could venture a few other words that sum up 2020, Collins Dictionary has declared that "lockdown" is its word of the year.
Most of the words on the shortlist for Collins Word of the Year 2020 were to do with the coronavirus pandemic, including coronavirus "with an extraordinary 35,000-fold increase in use year-on-year".
David Shariatmadari, writing for the dictionary's blog, said lockdown was "the condition we've most dreaded in 2020 - a state of national stasis, where almost everything that constitutes normal public life is suspended".
"Under lockdown, our waking hours get a lot smaller. We return to a simpler state - which some have, in fact appreciated - but it's a far more restricted one. We see few people, and fewer places. We're quite literally housebound," he wrote.
"It's not a shock to remember, then, that lockdown was originally a piece of prison vocabulary: it's when inmates are confined to their cells because of some disturbance on the wing.
"2020 is year that the meaning of the word shifted irrevocably: in most people's minds, lockdown is now a public health measure - its use having increased exponentially since 2019."
But, Shariatmadari noted, the language of 2020 wasn't all dominated by COVID-19.
There was also "Megxit" for Harry and Meghan's decision to stand down as senior members of the royal family, "BLM" for the Black Lives Matter movement and "TikToker" as TikTok" eclipsed all others as a venue for memes and a peculiar new kind of self-expression, at least for Generation Z, for whom TikToking is practically a way of life".
