What's in a word? A year. Or maybe an era.

"COVID deaths reach 750,000" and "Doses for younger kids set off fresh scramble" read headlines in the news sections of Thursday's Star Tribune. Even the sports pages reflected the news narrative with "Rodgers in COVID protocol, out Sunday," a story about star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whose vaccination status was then still under question.

So it seems fitting that this week the Oxford Languages, which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary, chose "vax" as its 2021 word of the year.

"Whether you are vaxxed, double-vaxxed, or unvaxxed, the language relating to vaccines and vaccination permeated all of our lives in 2021," Oxford said (using the optional double-x spelling) in its report. The word increased in usage 72-fold in just one year, and Oxford explained that "For lexicographers, it is rare to observe a single topic impact language so dramatically, and in such a short period of time become a critical part or our everyday communication."

"Vax is a really flexible word," Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said in an interview, describing the word as short, powerful, punchy and having "a crackle to it." Vax also "combines well with other words, and so you end up having a word that combined with others to move into a lot of cultural realms this year."

And a lot of political realms. The Wednesday headlines that dominated front pages — pushing COVID stories just a little lower — were election results, which turned in Virginia and elsewhere in part on voters' response to vaccine and mask mandates, among other culture-war battles.

The political potency of "vax" and "vaccine" can be seen in shifts between the top-10 nouns that modified the word. All reflected impending improvement last October-December (vaccine candidate, trial, distribution, development, dose, rollout, news, maker, approval and developer). But by the third quarter of 2021, the politicization and polarity of the result of Operation Warp Speed quickly warped many modifiers into a more negative framework (dose, mandate, passport, rollout, hesitancy, requirement, card, clinic, supply, booster). And, Oxford adds, there's the ubiquitous use of anti-vax and anti-vaxxer.

"Vax," according to Oxford, dates to the 1980s. But "vaccine" is more venerable, appearing in 1799, at the time of English physician Edward Jenner's breakthrough work on a smallpox vaccine.

Just like today it wasn't long before rhetoric referencing resistance to the vaccine appeared.

Jenner himself foreshadowed the forceful nature of the modern movement against coronavirus vaccines in an 1812 letter that read, in part, "The Anti-Vacks are assailing me … with all the force they can muster in the newspapers." Insert the words internet, talk radio and cable news along with newspapers, and swap the "x" for the "ck" in "vacks," and it could read like a lament from Anthony Fauci.

The word of the year isn't just a subjective judgment on the linguistic zeitgeist; it's the product of a process that seems more driven by data files than a linguaphiles. Grathwohl said it's the result of "corpus linguistics," in which "large, curated bodies of data" of spoken, written, formal and informal language from English of different varieties around the world can "help us understand not just when a word is being used, but how often it's being used, in what context [and] what other words are positioned with it to help give us context."

Which in turn gives context to the string of words of the year that suggest a sharp turn to a turbulent era. So much turmoil, in fact, that Oxford couldn't limit it to just one in the seminal year of 2020, instead compiling "Words of an Unprecedented Year" — 48 in total, from "allyship" to "Zoombombing," with "wokeness," "cancel culture," "virtue signaling," "systemic racism," "defund" and dozens of others in between.

In some cases, these words and phrases frayed the social fabric, and even factored in Tuesday's elections. For instance, an academic approach to systemic racism called critical race theory became a rallying cry in Virginia's gubernatorial race (drowning out Democrats' demonstrable counter that it's not taught in public schools). And the GOP put the Dems on the "defund" defensive after several members of the Minneapolis City Council, responding to George Floyd's murder, took to a stage fronted by the words "Defund Police" written in all-caps, an optic capitalized on by Republicans in the 2020 and 2021 elections (it will likely be leveraged in the 2022 midterms as well).

Other times, phrases not sticking can create political problems. The "Build Back Better" plan is languishing in Congress in part because it became better known for its cost ($3 trillion? $1.75 trillion?) than its value.

"Words are incredibly important," Grathwohl said. "Precision in language is incredibly powerful."

Everything, said Anatoly Liberman, a University of Minnesota language professor, "is defined by language." It "defines people's thought to the same degree as thought defines language."

It also can define not just a year, but an era.

Because besides "vax" and the bevy of 2020 terms, recent Oxford words of the year suggest turbulence.

Using the same data-driven process, "climate emergency" was 2019's choice, a selection relevant today, given this year's catastrophic weather events worldwide and the U.N. global climate summit in Glasgow this week.

A year earlier, "toxic" topped the list, with what Oxford calls "collocates" — words habitually used alongside toxic — reflecting how cultural factors have joined chemical and environmental ones (masculinity, substance, gas, environment, relationship, culture, waste and algae rounding out the Top 10).

In 2017, it was "youthquake," which reflected more U.K. than U.S. politics, with younger voters vaulting leftist Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party (not enough to elevate him to prime minister, however).

"Post-truth" was the 2016 choice in a year when both Brexit and Donald Trump triumphed at the polls. While the phrase is not new, Oxford points out that it formerly was meant literally ("after the truth is known") than its more modern implication "that truth itself has become irrelevant."

The half-decade's designations are "pretty serious," said Grathwohl. "I'm sure that does reflect a cultural kind of shift in a way that our discourse, what we're discussing, feels like the stakes are high right now."

Periods "of great social upheaval, periods of great unrest" can impact language usage, Liberman said, agreeing that "to a great extent" we're in such an era.

The tumult is likely to last.

Which may make some pine for more placidity, when words like "sudoku" (2005) or "selfie" (2013) topped Oxford's list.

John Rash is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. The Rash Report can be heard at 8:10 a.m. Fridays on WCCO Radio, 830-AM. On Twitter: @rashreport.