The Words of the Year 2021 were selected in a competition organized by the Institute of Polish Language of the University of Warsaw (UW) and the Polish Language Foundation. The winning words were picked in two ways – they were chosen separately by3.3 thousand Internet users and the linguists.  The words of the Year 2021 are “vaccination” and “border”.    

The first place in the Internet voting was taken by the word “vaccination”, indicated by over 15% of voters. The second place was taken by “virtue” (women’s) with nearly 13% indications, and the third word was an adjective “remote” (work, teaching) with 11% of votes.

The jury of linguists from the University of Warsaw and other Polish universities selected in this competition two words: “border” and “vaccination” like Internet users.

“Vaccination” has been the word of the year 2021 in many countries. In Poland it is coined from the “horticultural” verb “to vaccinate e.g. bushes”. Just as specialists give a person a small dose of germs to protect him from disease, so have they been transferring the shoot of one plant to another for centuries to obtain a better and healthier variety. Poles call both procedures vaccination in Polish. Whereas the noun “strain” (a vaccinating part of plant) originally meant a refined tree, only later “tribe” – said Prof. Magdalena Derwojedowa, a linguist from the University of Warsaw, who commented on the results of the competition.

The second word “border” was explained by Prof. Marek Łaziński from the University of Warsaw. The “border” was already the word of September 2015, the year in which the noun “refugee” became the word of the year. At that time, it was about the borders of southern Europe, in 2021 it was about the Polish-Belarusian border. The word “border” until recently associated with any area, with crossing, closing and opening (in a pandemic), with a passport (also covid), today it is associated with the words “crisis, cross, illegally, migrant, state of emergency, barbed wire, wall, defense, provocation “- said Prof. Łaziński.

Adrian Andrzejewski