It’s time for another roundup of the words that got our trending word ticker atop our homepage ticking this past week. In this batch, we offer a “stirring” mix of 10 terms that trended (i.e., significantly increased by percentage measured against searches on the the previous day). We begin with our top three lookups. Then, we’ll highlight some words that are notable due to the …
What do spivvy, smuggery, stingo, and schlemiel have in common? Sure, they begin with the letter S. But what’s more, they are also some of the leading lookups on Dictionary.com since July 8. Since our introduction of it in our last trending writeup, our ticker has been tirelessly scrolling across our homepage. And, we’ve continued to watch. So, let’s get started with our top five …
by Ashley AustrewMost of us are familiar with the concept of being burned out. It’s that feeling you get when you’re stressed, overwhelmed, and simply don’t have any more energy to devote to a given task, activity, … or career. Traditionally, the word burnout has been used more as a self-diagnosis or casual expression rather than treated as a medical syndrome or mental health problem. …
He may have been 🎶dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor🎶 … but by now we all know Alexander Hamilton grew up to be a hero and a scholar. However, did you know the first secretary of the treasury was also quite the linguist? Since Lin-Manuel Miranda turned Hamilton from a mysterious face on our $10 bill …
We’re already halfway through 2019, which means we had to look back at our word search data! We love data, OK. Plus, the search trends on Dictionary.com from April through June 2019 did not disappoint. Politics, of course, drove many of the searches. And, uh, a quick warning: there are some references to adult content ahead. (Hey, we don’t control the words, folks. We document …
You may have noticed a nifty new tool scrolling across the top of the homepage of Dictionary.com. But, what makes it tick? What is the trending word ticker, and how does it work? Rather than reading out stock prices, our ticker pulls real-time data on daily word search trends in our dictionary. The percentage is a measurement of how many searches there are for a …
Recently, the phrase nice guy has been used to describe guys who are anything but … nice by current standards. What’s the origin of nice? Nice, it turns out, began as a negative term derived from the Latin nescius, meaning “unaware, ignorant.” This sense of “ignorant” was carried over into English when the word was first borrowed (via French) in the early 1300s. And for almost …
