Pissant And Other Trending Words On Dictionary.com

pissant

Pissant is a new word to our trending list, and Tom Brady took real offense to this one.

A host on the WEEI radio station: Alex Reimer, made the remark about Brady’s daughter after watching the documentary Tom vs. Time. Tom agreed to do another interview with the station after the remark was made, but when the host brought it up again, Tom quickly ended the interview. Yikes. Don’t fire up the GOAT.

cuckold

Cuckold and cuckolding made the trending list this week with an increase in searches by 532%.

CNN (and others in response) published an article with the headline: “Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, study says.” In it, they say:

“Today, however, cuckolding has become fetishized into a powerful sexual fantasy for some men, who get aroused by the idea of their romantic partner engaging in sexual activity with someone else. Women also share this fantasy, but less so than men.”

Very . . . interesting.

pundit

Pundit was up 101% in searches this week. And, it’s not that surprising with the State of the Union taking place.

But, another big story going around about pundits is that the old New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is now a pundit, and he may actually be good at it.

And, another story about pundits made its rounds too: “Kimmel claps back at pundit who slammed Stormy Daniels appearance.”

dwarf

Up 123% in searches, dwarf made the news for some pretty interesting scientific reasons.

  1. LP 415-17 is a K-dwarf star located 267 light-years from Earth, and they just found three “super-Earths” orbiting it.
  2. Brown dwarfs: Are they planets or not?
  3. And, back on planet Earth: “Strange orange cave dwelling African dwarf crocodiles could be evolving into a new species.”

bot

Up 189% in searches, bot made the list this week. Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites can surely explain why.

The New York Times did an investigation into bots on the most popular social-media sites—mainly into the buying and selling of fake followers. After the expose, it seems Twitter might have done a bot purge, as many people, especially celebrities, claimed to have lost many followers overnight. Twitter is the main offender when it comes to bots, and now the New York Attorney General has said he will open a formal investigation into the matter.

However, bots may be helping some people. Business Insider published a piece on a new app: Woebot. It is “an artificially intelligent chatbot (and recently launched app) that uses the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT — one of the most heavily researched clinical approaches to treating depression.” Developed by a Stanford clinical psychologist, it’s not meant to replace in-person therapy, it’s just a different type of therapy altogether.

contagious

It’s flu season, i.e., contagious diseases are on everyone’s minds. Up 197% this week in searches, contagious made the list due to the spreading risk of the flu in all 50 states. It’s a doozy this year.

prepubescent

You know when you see this word in the search trends, it’s not going to be a good story. Prepubescent is another word for a young child, and Mark Salling, an actor who was on the show Glee, killed himself this week after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography. SMH.

oligarch

Oligarch is a new word to the trending list, and the US Treasury is to thank for it. They put together an Oligarch List. And, the Daily Beast made an interesting point about it:

“Analyzing the list that was made available, Russian observers wondered if its authors had just copied and pasted names of officials from the Kremlin’s website and from the Forbes list of Russian billionaires (this much eventually was confirmed by the administration) without much thought, just to demonstrate to the U.S. Congress that Trump is complying with the letter of a sanctions law he never wanted.”

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Word of the Day

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synchronicity

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Can you guess the definition?

Word of the day
synchronicity

[ sing-kruh-nis-i-tee ]