Merriam-Webster has declared ‘pandemic’ as the word of the year.

The online dictionary said that the term related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has the most online lookups than any other word.

“Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it’s fitting that in this exceptional – and exceptionally difficult – year, a single word came immediately to the fore,” the dictionary publisher said.

Merriam-Webster.com defines pandemic as “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.”

The word’s Greek roots are “pan,” meaning all or every and “demos,” meaning people, Merriam-Webster said.

Dictionary lookups, according to Reuters, dramatically increased on March 11 when the World Health Organization officially labeled COVID-19 a pandemic.

Merriam said that the word saw the single largest spike in dictionary traffic in 2020, showing an increase of 115,806% over lookups on that day in 2019.