Il nostro lessico è diventato “virale”. Il vocabolario dell’emergenza sanitaria, economica e sociale ai tempi della pandemia di COVID-19

Our Lexicon Has Gone “Viral.” The Vocabulary of the Health, Economic and Social Emergency at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health crisis which has radically changed our lives. Its impact goes far beyond the health sector, affecting all aspects of the society and of our lives, including our vocabulary. Since its outbreak it has led to thousands of newly coined words and expressions (neologisms) both in English and in other languages. This paper explores the linguistic impact of the pandemic on the Hungarian language compared to Italian and English and offers an overview of the most frequent or of the linguistically most interesting Hungarian neologisms and expressions related to Coronavirus (COVID-19). The analysis is performed on a trilingual glossary (Hungarian-Italian-English) created by the author and published on Lexonomy.eu. The glossary was compiled containing those common terms that are important for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. This study would suggest that the most frequently occurring word formation processes of the Hungarian neologisms related to the pandemic are compounding, syntagms, blending, derivation and semantic extension.