Goodbye, 2019. Hello, 2020! Well, not just yet. As we look ahead to what the new year will bring, we also reflect back on the previous one—and at Dictionary.com, that means analyzing the top words that sent users to our site in 2019. We dived into our data and identified the five words that trended the most each month. And how did we measure those …
The word ban gets bandied about a lot these days, from vegan brides wanting to ban meat-eaters from their weddings to plastic straws getting banned from coffee drinks. On an individual level, banning things we don’t like or agree with can be an easy way to rid them from our life. But, zoom out to a governmental and societal level, and bans become much more complex. What …
by Ashley Austrew and John Kelly In late February 2019, the House of Representatives voted to block President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border. Trump’s declaration—issued on February, 15, 2019 and based on the emergency powers granted to the presidency by the Constitution—would build a wall with funds not approved by Congress, which has authority over the nation’s finances and budget. …
by Ashley Austrew It’s not every day you hear the F-word at a congressional event … But in January 2019, at an event celebrating progressive women in congress, that’s exactly what happened. Rashida Tlaib, the country’s first Palestinian-American congresswoman, told a story about what her congressional win meant to her son. She told the crowd, “…when your son looks at you and says: ‘Momma, look, …
Donald Trump took the oath of office on Friday, January 20, 2017 and officially became the 45th President of the United States of America. Everyone has an opinion on the word choices and speaking styles of politicians, and speeches from world leaders often cause words to spike in lookups on Dictionary.com. Inauguration and inaugurate (to induct into office with formal ceremonies; to install) were the top lookups …
After his second and final term, President Barack Obama gave his farewell speech Tuesday, January 10 in Chicago, the city that launched his rise to national prominence. Word choices and speech patterns of our world leaders are a constant source of discussion (and comedy skits), as every administration has a style and at least one tic. Long known as an effective public speaker, Obama peppered …
Nobody can guess how serious the next hurricane will be, but you can find out what it will be named. An important thing to note is that weather events aren’t eligible for a name until they transform from a tropical depression into a tropical storm. When tropical storms reach a certain velocity, they become cyclones, which North Americans call hurricanes. How are hurricanes named? Then, the name of …
In our November 2015 update to the dictionary, we added more than 150 new words and definitions, and revised over 1,000 entries. New additions such as feels, yaaas, and doge highlight the role of social media in transmitting and popularizing new terms, while fitness tracker, digital wallet, and Internet of Things demonstrate the new ways that technological innovation is changing the way we live and …
While Kim Kardashian was busy “breaking the Internet” with her controversial photoshoot for Paper in November of 2014, New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde was teaching the world—or at least her Twitter and Tumblr followers—about a new slang use of the word mom. How is mom used on the internet? These three little letters tweeted out by Lorde in response to Kardashian’s cover photo caused such confusion that the 18-year-old …
What does manic pixie dream girl mean? In 2007, film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl in an attempt to classify Kirsten Dunst’s role in Elizabethtown. He first described this stock romantic character as a woman who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Since the …