New Delhi: Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year- 2020 prize went to an obvious choice: pandemic. The term had the most online dictionary lookups of any word, Merriam-Webster said on its website, after a year in which at least 1.4 million people globally have died from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it’s fitting that in this exceptional – and exceptionally difficult – year, a single word came immediately to the fore,” the dictionary publisher said.

According to the Merriam- Webster.com Pandemic is defined as “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population”. The word’s Greek roots are “pan,” meaning all or every, and “demos,” meaning people, Merriam-Webster said.

Dictionary lookups skyrocketed on March 11 when the WHO officially labeled Covid-19 a pandemic. The word “saw the single largest spike in dictionary traffic in 2020, showing an increase of 115,806% over lookups on that day in 2019,” said the company, founded in 1831.