'Kontaktbeschränkungen, contact restrictions, and Ausgehbeschränkung, going out restrictions, those are interesting,' he says. He thinks the ones that are most precise have more lasting potential. Only a small fraction of new pandemic words will likely make it into the dictionary. 'So that's been a stroke of genius from their perspective.' But people opposed to mask requirements are using the word muzzle in a new way: 'to portray adherence to sensible public health measures as an act of submission under an authoritarian government,' Stefanowitsch says. Maulkorb, or muzzle, is not on the list of new words. New nouns are often formed in German by combining two or three nouns, says Anatol Stefanowitsch, a professor of linguistics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Live music is allowed, provided the audience remains in their cars, at an Autokonzert. A Geisterveranstaltung (ghost event) is an event with no people in attendance, usually sports.

German's propensity for compounding words has been a big part of the proliferation.įor example, Coronamutationsgebiet is an area where coronavirus mutations are widespread. In English, dictionaries have noted a few dozen new entries and revisions: social distancing, frontliner, super-spreader, 'Zoom' as a verb.īut in Germany, lexicographers at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language have compiled more than 1,200 new words related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic has changed how people talk and write. A research group noted more than 1,200 new words in German inspired by the pandemic. A woman walks past a closed flower shop in Berlin on Thursday.

German words in english lexicon