According to the Centre for the Luxembourgish Language (ZLS), booster ("Boosteren" in Luxembourgish) has been the word of the year for 2021, with CovidCheck coming second.
From 29 November to 13 December 2021, members of the public could submit their proposal for the word of the year 2021 via an online form. A total of 453 emails from 427 different email addresses were received, with a total of 495 proposals, including 175 different terms.
From this longlist, the ZLS team made a shortlist of 20 words and submitted it to the jury. Among them were representatives of the ZLS.
Like last year, this year most proposals had something to do with the corona pandemic.
Incidentally, Covidiot was present as well, but it did not make it into the top 10, just like in 2020.
Among the proposals, Covid words made up the vast majority - from game changers and testers across Delta and Omicron to Antivax. Themes that had nothing to do with the virus were rarely seen.
Lately "Booster" has become one of the central themes in the pandemic. Because the effects of vaccines against the coronavirus slow down after a few months, they need a push or a boost to stay effective: one needs to boost it. "Boosteren" is a great example of how foreign words can be integrated into the Luxembourgish language without any problems.
"CovidCheck" is the term that is currently omnipresent - at work, at leisure, in the restaurant... CovidCheck should not only prevent a new lockdown, it should also enable one to come together with the utmost security. CovidCheck is responsible for checking its status, i.e. either 3G (vaccinated, cured, tested) or 2G (vaccinated, cured). In this connection the word can also easily be used to make a verb (covidcheck): Have you already co-checked? And if one is rather annoyed by this measure, one might even speak of Gecovidchecks. Orthographically, the CovidCheck is also interesting because it is written with a capital letter inside the word, without hyphens. Such spellings are not (yet) provided for in official spelling, but are (internationally) in trend, apart from names: MeToo, WhatsApp etc.
