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It was only decades later on, according to Oxford’s report on its research, that “vaccine” happened used for shot versus other diseases. Curiously, while the shortened kind “vax” did not appear till the 1980s, the term “anti-vax”– spelled “anti-vacks”– appeared early.

“The Anti-Vacks are assaulting me … with all the force they can muster in the papers,” Jenner himself wrote in an 1812 letter.

In our own time, “vax”– unlike “box,” “tax” and lots of other words– usually takes on a double x in inflected terms like “vaxxed” or “anti-vaxxer,” in keeping, the report says, with the pattern toward “meaningful doubling” that has actually become typical in particular contexts (particularly in digital communication terms like “doxxing”).

The report points out neologisms like “vaxxie,” “vaxinista” and “vax(i)cation” and “inoculati.” Some may disappear and never make it into the dictionary. But others– like “strollout,” which gained prominence in Australia in May, amid frustration over the slow rate of vaccination programs– may become beneficial in a wider range of contexts, McPherson said.

Some coinages speak to the polarization around vaccines themselves. “Vaxxident” (a road mishap apparently related to vaccine side effects) has actually up until now been seen primarily on vaccine-skeptical sites, while “spreadneck” and “anti-faxxer,” fairly unusual negative terms for vaccine skeptics and Covid deniers, might be more typical on liberal blue-state lips.

For the first time, Oxford’s report takes a look at the vocabulary of vaccination in nine other languages. Numerous languages, including French and Russian, simply use a version of the English word “vaccine.” In Spanish, the word for vaccine is “vacuna,” the feminine form of the adjective vacuno, or bovine. Unlike in English, where speakers often say “shot” or “jab” in colloquial contexts, “vacuna” is used “throughout all registers,” according to Oxford’s report.