As 2009 draws to a close, many have had choice words to describe their feelings about the economy, healthcare, H1N1 and unemployment. Perhaps that is why the word admonish has been chosen as Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Year" for 2009. Admonish is a verb that means "to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner."
The 2009 Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year list is based on actual user lookups to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus. This year's traffic was generated by topics and events ranging from Michael Jackson to H1N1 to the recession and, of course, politics.
The 2009 Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year list is based on actual user lookups to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus. The word of the year that received the highest intensity of searches over the shortest period of time is admonish.
"Admonish shot to the top of the list three days after Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during a speech made by President Obama, and it remained among our top lookups for weeks," said Peter A. Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's Editor at Large. "When the House announced plans to 'admonish' Rep. Wilson, the word was understood to be technical or official, and it has been repeated often in coverage of recent contentious political issues. While this particular story wasn't very important in the context of a year's worth of news, it triggered enormous interest in this word."
Traffic to Merriam-Webster.com now exceeds 1.3 billion individual page views per year. On average, there are approximately ten lookup requests in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary or Thesaurus per second. During peak hours, this may increase to more than 100 requests per second.
Here are the 2009 Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year:
- admonish
- emaciated
- empathy
- furlough
- inaugurate
- nugatory
- pandemic
- philanderer
- repose
- rogue
According to Sokolowski, "Words associated with two of the year's top news stories were likely looked up because they seemed to designate something very specific. The word philanderer was looked up frequently on two occasions, most likely as a result of stories concerning Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and late night talk show host David Letterman. Interest in the word furlough shows how much the economy is on people's minds, but also something more: this concern is clearly about jobs and income, not the macroeconomic picture."
Chery Phillips
HULIQ.com
source: MirriamWebster.com
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