Lockdown, quarantine and pandemic are three words most people never uttered before 2020, a year dominated by COVID-19, Trump tweets and the Black Lives Matter movement.

But they have become among the most widely used words this year, including in Malta, where kwarantina and imxija re-entered our oral vocabulary.

Kemm sabu llum?... qualifies as the question of the year

The year also gifted us with words such as covidiot – a person who ignores public health warnings, hoards toilet paper and will probably refuse getting vaccinated. Of course, the ever-evolving Maltese language has its own version: koronut.

Every year, the online Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, among others, list new English words that made it into the pop-culture lexicon. This year has seen so many colossal events that Oxford Dictionary expanded its word-of-the-year to “words of an unprecedented year”, such as COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, lockdown and support bubbles.

Cambridge Dictionary, meanwhile, announced that one of the most highly searched words was ‘quarantine’.

Times of Malta asked Michael Spagnol, who heads the Department of Maltese language at the University of Malta and runs the popular Facebook page Kelma Kelma for the 10 words that, in some way or another, left an impact on the Maltese lexicon in 2020.

The word vaċċin, to protect against the imxija, was one of the words that was bandied around all year in 2020. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Imxija: an old word that this year was on everyone’s lips, meaning a disease that is passed on from one person to another – an epidemy, or pandemic. In some places, such as in Rabat, it is used to refer to the flu, and the first sneeze or cough of the season is often followed with the words “the imxija is here”.

Kwarantina: from the Italian word quarantena or quarantine, meaning 40 days – the time ships used to remain isolated to avoid the spread of contagious disease. Eventually, it started being used to mean a period of isolation (medical professionals, please note it is iżolament not iżolazzjoni).

Vaċċin… or tilqima: from the Italian word vaccino, in turn adapted from the Latin word vacca after an 18th century English physician, Edward Jenner, deliberately infected children with small amounts of cowpox to protect against the disease – an experiment that pioneered the concept of vaccines.

What is more painful, getting swabbed or reading tiswobbja? Photo: Shutterstock

Maskra… or maskla? This word led to several heated debates on social media, some claiming it should be written with an ‘r’ as it is a derivative of the Italian word maschera, while others insisting it should be written in its phonetic form, with an ‘l’.

According to Spagnol both are correct because in some instances the ‘r’ and ‘l’ are interchangeable and create variants such as tamar/tamal (dates), buri/buli (bad mood), friskatur/fliskatur (hand basin).

However, no matter how one writes or says it, they should wear a mask properly and cover their nose!

‘Positive’ has become the most negative word of the year. File photo: Times of Malta

Tiswobbja: this word is not very common in written Maltese. However, it is used all the time in spoken Maltese… meaning it is probably the first time you are seeing it in black and white and it must have been a bit painful for your eyes.

The coronavirus brought with it this newish verb used to describe the poking of nasal cavities by frontliners.

Pożittiv: in December of 2019 this word was widely associated with some political movement calling for a positive outlook on life. However, with the turn of the decade it soon became the most negative word of the year.

Koronut: the Maltese version of covidiot for whoever is careless, continues mingling with people and spreading the virus – ‘Ja koronut l’hu reġa’ ħareġ!’ (What a covidiot he is, he went out again!)

Tiskajpja, tiżżumja jew vempilli waħda. Photo: Shutterstock

Vempila: a coining of the words video and ċempila to mean ‘a videocall’.

Since so many people started spending much more time at home and carrying most meetings online, the Maltese lexicon, too, had to adapt to the new reality.

We soon started speaking of teleskola and telexogħol. The verb tiskajpja (to Skype call) was soon replaced with tiżżumja (to hold a Zoom call) until someone asked ‘Nista’ ntik vempila?’ (Can I videocall you?) and ‘Illejla vempilli waħda ta’ (Tonight videocall me).

Will this word stick, in a similar way that stessu (selfie) did a couple of years ago?

Kemm sabu llum? (How many cases did they find today?): it is three, rather than one word, but it definitely qualifies as the question of the year, and, in tombola-fashion, is usually followed by ‘how many died?’

Xumm pumm: Joseph ‘il-Kapxi’ Mangion. Photo: Malta’s Got Talent Facebook page

Xumm pumm: up until 2019, the Maltese used ċumm bumm or ċumm pumm for something that happened overnight.

Halfway through the year, when feasts and fireworks were put off as part of the COVID-19 mitigation measures, fireworks beatboxer – Joseph ‘il-Kapxi’ Mangion, a Malta’s Got Talent participant – introduced ‘xumm pumm’ to mean ‘all of a sudden’ and it spread across social media like wildfire.