Pingdemic

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The rapid rise in self-isolation resulting from many people being sent advisory alerts ("pings") by the National Health Service’s COVID-19 test and trace app for mobile phones. UK, informal, neologism

    "The Metropolitan Line was forced to close on July 17 because so many workers were self-isolating that insufficient control room staff remained to run the service."

Example

More examples

"The Metropolitan Line was forced to close on July 17 because so many workers were self-isolating that insufficient control room staff remained to run the service."

Etymology

Blend of ping + pandemic, coined in 2021.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.