미국의 메리엄-웹스터 사전이 2021 올해의 단어로 '백신(Vaccine)'을 선정했다. 후보로는 "perseverance" "nomad" "infrastructure" "insurrection" "woke" "meta" "cicada"가 올랐었다. 

Vaccine comes from the Latin word for “cow,” vacca, because the term was initially used to refer to inoculation using doses of cowpox that, it was discovered, protect humans against smallpox. This word is a relatively recent one in English, dating back to the 1880s. 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Shows Just How Much of a Bummer 2021 Was

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-shows-just-how-much-of-a-bummer-2021-was-1264056