A year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word,” is how the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defined 2020. And so, it subsequently released a report titled Words of an Unprecedented Year that showcases how we adopted a “new collective vocabulary” — from COVID-related terms like “social distancing”, to the personal and political with “Black Lives Matter” and “impeachment.” So, we presented three words from the report to city-based avid readers to test if they got it right.

The chosen words and their definition as detailed by OED are below:
Moonshot/noun: An extremely ambitious and innovative project.
Context: The name of a UK government programme —Operation Moonshot — for mass COVID testing.
Mail-in/adjective: Designating ballots, surveys, etc., in which results are collected by mail.
Context: The US elections.
BIPOC/abbreviation: Black, indigenous, and other people of colour.
Context: Ongoing efforts to increase the representation and influence of racial minorities within institutions and organisations.