by John Kelly, Senior Research Editor at Dictionary.com It’s easy to confuse disinfectants and antiseptics. They have a lot in common, after all. Both are chemical agents used to reduce the risk of infection from germs and help stop the spread of disease. But, disinfectants and antiseptics also have differences in their use—differences that can be critical to your health and safety. Here’s the key …
In any election, there’s a ton of information to get a handle on. When can you vote? Can you vote early? Where can you vote? And oh yeah, who and what are you voting for? On top of all that, the electoral process in the US can be just plain confusing—no matter how much attention you, ahem, paid in American Government class. There’s the general …
Cheap, expensive, lavish, meager, a steal, or a rip-off. These are just some ways to talk about an item that costs money. But there are two other words used to talk about money as well: economic and economical. These words have two different meanings, despite them both being adjectives. Plus they’re also only two letters off, adding to the confusion. It’s pretty likely you’re mixing …
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 …
All politics, as they say, is personal. That truism definitely rang, well, true in the closing question of the third Democratic debate in Houston, Texas, Thursday, September 12, 2019. One of the moderators, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, asked the ten candidates on “the quality of resilience.” He went on:Every president confronts crises, defeats, and mistakes. So I want to ask each of you, what’s the most …
On Saturday, August 3, a gunman in El Paso, Texas, took the lives of 22 people and injured many more. The next morning, another shooter claimed 9 victims in Dayton, Ohio. As people were processing these massacres, many turned to the dictionary. We observed lookups for one term, stochastic terrorism, surge 63,389% on August 4, as compared to the week prior. Topping searches on https://t.co/OeJELgy3YL …
The Democratic candidates squared off this week in their second, two-night debate in Detroit, Michigan, ahead of their party primaries. As the candidates made their pitch to voters for why they should top the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, we were watching some of the standout or hot-button words they were using—and that drove viewers to look them up in …
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 Makes A Policy Program Name Stick? by John M. Cunningham In the 1910s there was Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom. The 1960s brought us Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. And now, with the help of Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal has become the talk of the Beltway. Since the early 20th century, presidents and other politicians in the United …
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 …
We’re back celebrating our Word of the Day! Because there’s plenty left to reminisce about from the last 10 years. In Part II of our lexical stroll down memory lane (see Part I, 1999–2008, here), we will be examining word selections from 2009–2018, unearthing serendipitous synchronicities and offering perspicacious perspectives into notable events and trends of the last decade. Oops, just kidding, because our first …