The neologisms of the COVID-19 pandemic in European Portuguese

UIDB/03213/2020 UIDP/03213/2020 UID/LIN/03213/2020 This paper discusses the creation and use of neologisms resulting from the worldwide situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, its occurrences in the press and social networks and how European Portuguese dictionaries have incorporated them (or not). We selected four neologisms candidates: two units referring to the disease designation (COVID-19; coronavirus, ‘coronavirus’), the other corresponding to a metonym for particular diseases (pandemia, ‘pandemic’) and a prefix element (tele-) related to the way of accomplishing certain tasks in the so-called “new normal” or “post-pandemic scenario”. Our goal is to observe the morphological formation of these units, their uses, and meanings. The data analysis aims to demonstrate the vitality of the lexical neology process in the domain of COVID-19 in a specific period (2019-2021), and how dictionaries are representing the neologisms. publishersversion published