On the Verb Vaccinate in Modern Speech

The article describes the functioning of the verb vaccinate in modern speech. The situation of a pandemic activates not only the production of new units and the emergence of new meanings, but also the use of words of certain thematic groups. The verb vaccinate is one example of a word assimilated during the pandemic. It was borrowed in the 19th century and used in literary language and received a special label in dictionaries. It is noted that in the modern speech this verb and derivatives of the nest ‘vaccine’, having received the status of ‘the word of the year’, are widely used. The expansion of the sphere of functioning of these units and their use in expressive-evaluative constructions, in particular in metaphorical images, confirms the tendency towards determinologization and neutralization in modern language. The article dwells on the fact that the verb to vaccinate is a two-aspect verb, which is characteristic to its whole  paradigm and either leads to ambiguity of interpretation, or is eliminated by means of context and perfectivation using the prefixes pro-, ot-, za-, s-. It is indicated that one of the common ways of indirectly denoting the specific meaning of the verb to vaccinate in modern journalism is its ‘reflection’ from a newspaper headline in a subtitle, in which this verb is replaced by a synonym of a certain type.