91Èȱ¬

The Children's Word of the Year has been announced and it is... coronavirus.

(No prizes if you could have guessed that!)

The word is decided each year by Oxford University Press (OUP) ahead of announcing the winners of the 91Èȱ¬'s 500 Words competition.

They use the entries to figure out what young people are talking about the most.

Out of the 134,709 pieces sent in for the competition this year, 459 writers mentioned the word coronavirus!

The competition is closed but the winners for each category will be announced live on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 2 on Friday 12 June.

Coronavirus was chosen as the 2020 Children's Word of the Year despite not being the most popular word used throughout the competition.

It was picked because it's a brand new word which was used across a range of different stories. OUP said its use shows the way young people are developing their own understanding of the world.

In previous years, the top words have been Brexit (2019), plastic (2018), Trump (2017) and refugee (2016).

Aside from coronavirus, there were lots of topics that were mentioned this year.

Climate change was one of the biggies with more than 3,000 references to floods or flooding.

Other climate worries that were mentioned included bushfires and global warming.

The word 'Alexa' - a reference to smart-speaker - was used 1,578 times in stories this year.

And Minecraft overtook Fortnite in popularity with more than 900 mentions.

And then there were certain names that came up again and again!

Here are the top ten non-fictional people that were mentioned in the stories:

What do you think about coronavirus being the Children's Word of the Year? Would you have chosen a different word? Let us know in the comments below.

Let us know in the comments below.