Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has made the years 2020 and 2021 an unpolitical and spiritual crisis. It has affected virtually everybody in the world and introduced a new normal. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, people have been hooked on consuming news media to follow the development of this unprecedented disease. Subsequently, a new language with vocabulary, expressions, and metaphors has appeared in various languages, including English and Arabic. Dictionaries have added new words in English and revised others; they are now fully integrated into our everyday vocabularies. COVID-19 has changed the English language in many ways: it has brought previously obscure medical words to the forefront of everyday speech, made terms related to social isolation more common, and witnessed a shift in meaning in other terms. As linguists, researchers, and teachers gradually return to their classrooms next term (Spring, 2022) we undertook this study to identify 57 English terms, expressions, and metaphors that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, either in English-speaking countries or Arabic-speaking countries where English is a first or second language. We deemed the new terminologies necessary for EFL learners in the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) countries. It can serve the purpose of making a list of these words and expressions to be taught to our EFL students at colleges of nursing and health science in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or any other equivalent colleges in the Arab World. The terms and expressions came from articles, magazines, and English and Arabic dictionaries published during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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