“The word that symbolizes 2021 is NFT”

HarperCollins, a large British publishing house that publishes the Collins English Dictionary, has selected NFT, a non-fungible token, as a symbol of 2021. Words related to COVID-19 and terms related to climate change are also being nominated as candidates.

NFT, which gives uniqueness that cannot be replaced by other data, is attracting a lot of attention in 2021, and in March, digital artist beeple’s work was traded at 75 billion won, the highest ever for NFT, and became a hot topic.

Against this background of topicality, HarperCollins chose NFT as a symbol of 2021. According to the HarperCollins blog, the Collins English Dictionary NFT entry describes it as a unique digital certificate registered on the blockchain used to record ownership of assets such as works of art or collector items.

In addition to NFT, the candidate for the word that symbolizes the year 2021 is climate anxiety, a problem caused by anxiety about climate change, double-vaxxed to indicate that the vaccine has been vaccinated twice, and three-dimensional virtual space. Metaverse, a service that provides this, a pingdemic in which contact tracking app notifications by UK health authorities stop ringing, cheugy meaning you are old, crypto assets and crypto acronym Crypto. (crypto), hybrid working, a working method that combines telecommuting and office work, Neopronoun, a new gender-considered synonym, Regency, a fashion sparked by the British regency from 1811 to 1820 Regencycore and others were nominated.

Oxford University Press, a publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, a well-known English dictionary along with the Collins English Dictionary, has chosen Vax, which means vaccine, for Word of the Year 2021. According to the Oxford University Press, the frequency of use of VAX in September 2021 is 72 times higher than in the same month of the previous year. There are also various coined words using vaxx, such as getting vaxxed, which refers to getting vaccinated, and fully vaxxed, which is a state of being fully vaccinated. In this regard, Oxford University Press has rated BAX as the word that best describes the mood of the year. Related information can be found here.