Word of the Year award goes to its rightful owner: pandemic

The Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year award went to its rightful owner: pandemic. Once an obscure term that appears most in English textbooks on Greek and Latin roots, “pandemic” this year eclipsed every other word in online dictionary searches, the publishing company said. The number of searches for the word skyrocketed by 115,806% y-o-y on 11 March.

Other words that defined everyday discourse this year include: Coronavirus, quarantine, asymptomatic, defund, mamba (following the tragic death of “the Black Mamba" Kobe Bryant), and malarkey (a word often used by US President-Elect Joe Biden).

Nasr-era defence minister ٍShams Badran has died in the UK at the age 91. Jailed in 1967 for torturing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, he lived the rest of his lift in self-imposed exile in the UK after being pardoned by then president Anwar Sadat in 1974.