The lexical and terminological development of polycrisis. Origins, popularisation, and discursive framing

This paper sets out to lexically and terminologically explore the word 'polycrisis'. What seems like a buzzword of recent times nonetheless expresses the concerns we hold about the fast-changing world we live in, and the multiple crises of various nature we face. Previous studies have investigated the word but paying closer attention to the concept behind it (e.g. Deviatnikova, 2023; Lawrence et al., 2024; Zaki et al., 2024; Bevitori & Russo, 2025; Jordheim, 2025; Parnell et al., 2025; Rakowski et al., 2025; Zaki, 2025; Delannoy et al., 2026). This study investigates the lexical origins, terminological development, and discursive diffusion of polycrisis across professional and public domains Lexically, the word will be explored in its origin and attestations, where possible. While the task does not seem enormous, the rapidity with which new coinages emerge and spread in the current digital times can pose challenges as to where they first appeared. Terminologically, the professional and academic fields in which it has been used, defined, adopted and circulated will be the focus of the investigation, reporting examples of usage and highlighting any changes in connotation across domains. Finally, its entrance into non-specialised settings, for instance its use in the media, could be explored. Methods in lexicology and specialised terminology will be applied, and literature on popularisation will be referred to. Corpora such as those offered by Sketch Engine will be used to analyse the keyword in context, extract collocations, provide examples. A discursive interpretation of the results will be offered. This will be a small case-study that only concentrates on a single word, but it could help trace its lexical origin, sketch its terminological development, describe its movement from professional to public discourse, which all reflect a significant discursive trend of the present times.