December 19, 2020
By AJ Willingham and Ivory Sherman
Last year this time, if you told someone you had a ‘quarantini’ they looked at you like you had five heads. But things change. A LOT OF. Let’s see how much your pandemic-era vocabulary has expanded over the course of this strange year.
What do you call a small group of people you want to socialize with during lockdowns and social distance?
Some people have made “quarantine teams” of close friends who agree to isolate themselves from everyone but each other. Others have just bought a lot of house plants.
Which of these is an unfortunate side effect of wearing a mask?
Masks can be an important part of safety equipment, but they can certainly do damage to your skin. And nobody likes maskne.
What do you call someone who courageously ignores the basic coronavirus safety guidelines?
A “Covidiot” has become the common term, but “just plain rude” would also suffice.
What do you call it when you can’t stop watching social media even though everything is terrible and it makes you sad?
We’ve all been through doom scrolling this year, and nothing good ever comes of it.
On the other hand, what’s the term for social media scrolling when something amazing has happened and you just can’t get enough of it?
Refreshing! What a happy sounding word. Almost as happy as the action it describes.
If you’re in the mood to get intimate with someone, but you have to do it through a video call, what do you call it?
And yes, the “Zooty” in “Zooty call” is a combination of “Zoom” and “loot”.
When time coincides, weeks become months and months lose meaning, what day is it?
All you really need to know is whether it’s a weekday or a weekend. Besides that, it’s all Blursday.
What is the signature lockdown drink (regardless of what ingredients)?
A Quarantini might be the most popular term for a nice Blursday cool, but we can switch it up and make a Cry Tai.
What’s the term for the questionable style some people turn to when they have to do their own hair maintenance at home?
Don’t joke about someone’s coronacut. It means they are safe and doing their best.
And finally, what term do we use to indicate something that happened before, say March 2020?
“Remember in The Before Times when there were restaurants and a lot of sports and no one knew what ‘Zooty call’ meant?”