“The basic job of the dictionary is to tell the truth about words,” the Merriam-Webster editor continued ... actually known which words people look up.” “Polarization” extends ...

Merriam-Webster chooses each word of the year based on lookup data—how often a word was searched in its online dictionary. Last year, the winning word was “authentic,” while “gaslighting ...

Merriam-Webster has picked its word of the year ... and social media", the dictionary publisher said. One reason many people search for the word is because it has a number of meanings, including ...

rarely more so than now,” the dictionary noted in its explanation. Search interest in the word “pander” grew in mid-October, according to Merriam-Webster, when several “conservative news ...