It was the interview heard ’round the world, so what happened when Stormy Daniels showed up on 60 Minutes to talk about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump? Let’s just say searches on Dictionary.com heated up this week, March 24–30, 2018! Perched and affair Twitter was abuzz the evening of March 25 as Daniels described the way the president perched on a bed. Searches for …
Turpitude, venality, and demagogue When former CIA Director John Brennan weighed in on the firing of former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, he likely expected to make waves. But did he know he’d send searches for his word choices skyrocketing on Dictionary.com? The director’s tweet, issued in response to President Donald Trump, represents the biggest spike in searches on Dictionary.com March 16–23, 2018! …
1. What caused the biggest jump in searches on Dictionary.com the week of March 8–15, 2018? The word rehabilitation had a whole lot of people scratching their heads. The term took a 607% leap in searches over the prior week. The spike followed news out of Connecticut that a former University of Hartford student named Brianna Brochu had been sentenced by a judge to “accelerated …
1. Vertigo was up in searches the week of March 1–7, 2018 by 339%. Here are a couple reasons why: Reader’s Digest did an expose on vertigo in general. Here’s what you need to know, according to them: “What Causes Vertigo? 15 Things Neurologists Wish You Knew”. Digital Trends wrote about some biofeedback headphones that can help people out who have vertigo. So, we have the explanation and the cure …
Buzzwords and catchphrases often surface in our culture. Many come from landmark news events, and, before you know it, that term is everywhere and firmly embedded in our collective conscience. Why do they strike such a chord? If there was a secret sauce to creating one of these memorable expressions, we’d all be copywriters. Let’s look at some from the world of news (and we’ll …
Catty It seems horribly unfair to adorable cats that catty is a human descriptor meaning “devious or spiteful” (and usually in reference to female behavior). What gives? The word cat has been around since the year 700. But then, in the Middle Ages, cat became one of the many offensive terms against women and was slang for “prostitute.” The association might have been made because …
1. Posthumously trended this week (increasing in searches by 102%) as the country still isn’t over the Parkland, Florida school shooting and neither are we. As Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students went back to school this week, the country (for the most part) applauded the heroism and activism that they’ve displayed. And, they’ve inspired action in all of us too—Dick’s Sporting Goods for the …
Inept was up 186% in searches this week . . . and this time it’s about somebody else’s dysfunctional government and leadership team. The Times helped us explain this one: “Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, and his deputy, Barnaby Joyce, traded extraordinary public barbs yesterday over an adulterous affair that has gripped the nation and fractured the government. Mr Turnbull said his deputy had ‘appalled everyone’ …
Mendacity Mendacity was our top trending word the week of Feb. 9–13, 2018, peaking at an 845% increase in searches. So, what’s mendacity? Lying, untruthfulness, falsehoods—all mendacity. Here’s why it’s newsworthy this week: Trump has some mendacity, for sure. Even his lawyers know it, which is why they are advising him not to meet with Mueller re: the Russia investigation, because lying to the FBI, even if …
Negative reinforcement vs. positive reinforcement Most people think that positive reinforcement means to lavish praise or encouragement, and that is a good part of its essence, but not all of it. What is negative reinforcement, then? Is that about withholding praise? Scolding? Admonishing? Positive reinforcement is actually something we’re all pretty familiar with. When you were a kid, did you get a weekly allowance for …
What makes certain accents sound sexy and others harsh? “The RINE in SPINE fawls MINELY on tha PLINE!” In the song “The Rain in Spain” from the musical My Fair Lady, phonetics professor Henry Higgins (“’enry ’iggins”) pleads with Eliza Doolittle to say “Ay not I, O not Ow.” By the end of the song, Eliza’s “AY-ing” and “O-ing” and pronouncing all her H’s. The …
1. hologram Searches for this futuristic term jumped 65% this week as news circulated that Justin Timberlake would be performing with a hologram of Prince during the Super Bowl halftime show. Before game-day, it came out that Prince was not a fan of the technology, saying in 1998, “that whole virtual reality thing… it really is demonic. And I am not a demon.” Ultimately, Timberlake …
