PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement that “justice” consistently bubbled into the top 20 or 30 lookups on the company’s website, spiking at times due to specific events but also skating close to the surface for much of the year. While it’s one of those common words people likely know how to spell and use correctly in a sentence, Sokolowski pointed to other reasons that drive search traffic. Among them is an attempt to focus a train of thought around a philosophical problem, or to seek aspirational motivation. Such well-known words are often among the most looked up every year, including those that are slightly abstract, including “love,” he said. “These are stories that connect to the culture and to society across races, across classes,” Sokolowski said."
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STORY: Merriam Webster’s 2018 word of the year is ‘justice,’ by Associated Press reporter Leanne Italie, published by The Toronto Star on December 17, 2018.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Merriam-Webster has chosen "justice" as its 2018 word of the year, driven by the churning news cycle and President Trump's Twitter feed."
GIST: "Racial justice. Obstruction of justice. Social justice. The
Justice Department. Merriam-Webster has chosen “justice” as its 2018
word of the year, driven by the churning news cycle over months and
months. The word follows “toxic,” picked by Oxford Dictionaries, and “misinformation,” plucked by Dictonary.com. Peter
Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, told The Associated
Press ahead of Monday’s announcement that “justice” consistently bubbled
into the top 20 or 30 lookups on the company’s website, spiking at
times due to specific events but also skating close to the surface for
much of the year. While it’s one of those common words people
likely know how to spell and use correctly in a sentence, Sokolowski
pointed to other reasons that drive search traffic. Among them is an
attempt to focus a train of thought around a philosophical problem, or
to seek aspirational motivation. Such well-known words are often among
the most looked up every year, including those that are slightly
abstract, including “love,” he said. “These
are stories that connect to the culture and to society across races,
across classes,” Sokolowski said. “We get this word that filters in.” That includes Twitter in a big way. Often,
when Trump tweets about the Department of Justice, he uses simply
“Justice.” On Aug. 1, when he tweeted his wish for then-Attorney General
Jeff Sessions to stop the Mueller investigation, searches spiked
significantly. Trump referred to “obstruction of justice,” a separate
entry on the Merriam-Webster site, prompting a lookup increase of 900
per cent over the same date the year before. Searches for
“justice” throughout the year, when compared to 2017, were up 74 per
cent on the site that has more than 100 million page views a month and
nearly half a million entries, Sokolowski said. To be word of the year
worthy, an entry has to show both a high volume of traffic and a
significant year-over-year increase in lookups — as opposed to, say, a
word that merely buzzed or felt lofty, he said. “We are not
editorializing. We looked at our data and we were ourselves surprised by
this word,” Sokolowski said. “This is a word that people have been
thinking about for this entire year.” The
word “justice” comes from Latin, unlike a lot of the more emotional
words that rose in Old English. Old English did have “law,” ‘’fair” and
“right,” but never “justice,” in reference to a system of laws. “It’s
not a coincidence that it comes from the 12th century, which
immediately follows the Norman conquest. When the Normans invaded
England they brought their language, Old French, which was basically the
then-modern version of Latin. They brought their system of government
and laws and imposed them on the people they conquered, and that’s why
all of the legal language in English today is Latin, just like the word
justice,” Sokolowski explained. “It took the imposition of a system of
laws to bring us the word justice.” One rule breaker: “witness,” a word with a purely Old English start. Other
words that experienced lookup spikes this year: “maverick” (Sen. John
McCain died); “respect” (Aretha Franklin died); “excelsior” (Stan Lee’s
signature battle cry. He died); “pissant” (A radio host described Tom
Brady’s daughter that way); “pansexual” (Janelle Monae described herself
that way); “laurel” (Remember laurel vs. yanny?); “feckless” (What
Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump, combined with a pejorative that begins
with “c’’); “epiphany” (The title of a BTS K-pop song that dropped this
year); “lodestar” (used in reference to McCain in the anonymous New
York Times op-ed identified as coming from inside the Trump
administration); and “nationalism” (At an Oct. 22 rally in Texas, Trump
declared himself a nationalist)."
The entire story can be read at:
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
