This presentation provides a focused analysis of the prevalence of loanwords and international terms versus their domestic equivalents in the Czech language, particularly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is grounded in a number of lexical items collected from articles published in Czech online newspapers during the pandemic period. The selected examples related to COVID-19 lexicon include both long-established borrowings that have been integrated to Czech, as well as emerging terms not yet documented in any reputable dictionaries. The article not only explores the adaptation of the borrowed lexical units to the Czech orthographic, phonological, and morphological systems, with a focus on some semantic shifts and differences in English. To avoid bias introduced by the younger generation’s familiarity with new English forms, lexical data for the study were collected via a questionnaire. This questionnaire was distributed among participants aged 50 and above, attending the University of the Third Age at the Silesian University in Opava as part of their lifelong learning program.