Pandexicon: How Language of the Pandemic Defined our New Cultural Reality by Wayne Grady

It was March 2020. Author Wayne Grady and his wife were leisurely enjoying their winter months in Mexico when countries became serious about closing down their borders because of the spread of COVID–19 internationally. The couple managed to book seats on the last regular flight back to their home in Kingston, Ontario, where everything felt ominously on the edge of change. 

As the calendar pages turned, Grady began hearing a whole new language evolve. Words that had rarely been used suddenly showed up in everyday conversation. He began to collect them. The result is pan-dex-i-con, a collection of words and mini-essays that begins with the ‘before time’ and brings us through the uncertainty of the height of the pandemic to what now tentatively may be an ‘after time’.

Phrases such as ‘above-the-keyboard dressing’ bring a smile while others such as ‘isolation’ carry pain. Some words were coined during this period such as ‘covidivorce’ or ‘hero pay,’ while many old terms took on new significance: pivoting, herd immunity, and lockdown. In the introduction Grady observes how illness always changes everything and how we do not like change. Beyond just a dictionary of words and their meanings, Grady provides timelines, medical and scientific information, political and international responses and his own experiences. The pandemic brought out the very best but also the worst in human beings. In that sense it had all the elements of an apocalyptic novel. 

Pandexicon does not read like a dictionary. I felt like I was reading a journal of a recent trip, asking myself if I really had been on this journey, was it really over or might I revisit this place in my lifetime? This book serves as a cultural record and commentary on the pandemic. My young grandchildren might someday search it out. (Greystone Books)