Vaxxident is a portmanteau of the words vaccine and accident. Variations of the word are: vaxident, vacident and vaccident. The definition refers to a medical incident where someone is performing an activity, usually driving, and has an accident due to a sudden side effect caused by one of the Covid-19 vaccines. The outcome can be devastating. These events really do happen as everyone’s physiology is unique and there’s no way of knowing in advance how someone will respond to the potential side effects of vaccination.
The Urban Dictionary defines Vaxxident as:
Post-vaccine automobile accident on roadways, caused by mini-strokes and blood clots in the brain. People are driving off the roads and striking trees — veering into other cars for head-on collisions — and apparently losing cognitive function while behind the wheel.
There are many reports of people getting into vaxxidents in their vehicles after having received Covid-19 vaccinations.
Shitting Pretty
The free online resource Wikitionary defines the term as an “unexpected medical incident occurring after the administration of a COVID vaccination.”
The term appears in the November 2, 2021 issue of the Washington Post which says: “The British company that publishes the Oxford English Dictionary has named “vax” as 2021’s word of the year…A host of “vaccination” variations have appeared during the pandemic [and] the politicization of vaccination and the pandemic has spawned terms such as “vaxxident,” a traffic accident that results from the alleged side effects of getting vaccinated against the coronavirus” (Jeong).
Social Media Trends as of August 1, 2023
The links used below reflect the different variations of spelling. There were no YouTube tags for any variation of vaxxident.
Facebook #vaxxident: people are posting about this
Instagram #vaxident: 39 posts
TikTok #vaccidents: 2.6 million views
Google Trends: I used the time frame from Jan 1, 2021 to the present for the trends anaylsis as the first Covid vaccines were administered in Dec 2020. Vaccident appeared in January 2021 and went through a series of peaks and troughs throughout to 2023.
Sources:
Jeong, Andrew. “‘Vax’ is Oxford’s word of the year, as pandemic’s ‘Fauci ouchie’ and ‘inoculati’ enter the lexicon.” The Washington Post. Nov 2, 2021. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/02/vax-word-year-oxford-coronavirus/.
Shitting Pretty. “Vaxxident.” Urban Dictionary. July 10, 2021. URL: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vaxxident.
“Vaxident.“ Wikitionary. URL: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vaxident#English.