I realize that some people say "the covid" ("Did you get the covid?") but it generally sounds uneducated to my ear. But I can't figure out why.
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"The 'flu'" was an old-fashioned way of labelling the disease; I can just about remember 'the measles'. The usage has stuck, to a small degree. But diseases are usually anarthrous (mumps, measles, rubella, cancer, chicken pox ...). Perhaps 'a cold' because they used to occur quite regularly. // 'Covid' itself could be seen as a misnomer; there are many coronaviruses, causing diseases of vastly differing severity in a typical human. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 02 '22 at 15:07
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1@EdwinAshworth Ironically, although we haven't fallen into the idiomatic pattern of "the Coronavirus" except in jest, it might actually make more sense, as it could stand for "Yeah yeah, I know that there are many coronaviruses, but we all understand that we mean the one that we're all talking about these days." – Andy Bonner Feb 02 '22 at 15:34
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"I, like the thousands of other 'victims' here in New South Wales, have caught the covid." (Medium.com) "around 30 per cent of the country, or 16.8million people, will have caught the Covid since the pandemic started in England" (Daily Mail) – Michael Harvey Feb 02 '22 at 15:36
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1@Andy Bonner Really? – Edwin Ashworth Feb 02 '22 at 17:46
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@MichaelHarvey Yeah, but I think there's a certain colloquial jocularity in most of those uses, like Jonathan Coulton prophesying that "you might get the cancer." Of course, we'll see how events and usage evolve... – Andy Bonner Feb 02 '22 at 18:01
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1@AndyBonner this has been discussed before, either on here or ELL, and the general impression is that US speakers are more likely to say 'the flu', 'the measles', etc, and British English speakers (including Australia, NZ, etc,) more likely to omit the definite article. I don't know about formality or register. Go back 100 years, less educated BrE speakers would have used 'the' more. – Michael Harvey Feb 02 '22 at 18:24