Maskentrottel: Germany coins 1,200 new Covid words

And other stories from the stranger side of life

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More than 1,200 new German words have been created during the Covid era, among them coronaangst (anxiety about the virus), coronafrisur (corona hairstyle) and maskentrottel (mask idiot who wears a face covering leaving the nose exposed). “I can’t think of anything, at least since the Second World War, that would have changed the vocabulary as drastically, and at the same time as quickly, as the corona pandemic,” said a linguistics professor.

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