ELC BLOG

The Many Uses of Twitter

Twitter’s popularity over the years have led to its users to accomplish many things. People can tweet their dissatisfaction with a company (and get instant customer service); retweet interesting, funny, or even controversial tweets from others; vote for their favorite contestant on a singing show; get alerts from local news feeds; and more!

But did you know you could also use Twitter to see which words have been recently searched in online dictionaries? Peter Sokolowski, the lexicographer for Merriam-Webster, tweets interesting information about the English language on his personal feed. The Merriam-Webster twitter feed does as well. Both feeds will occasionally comment on the popularity of certain words in real time, which can be commentary on current events. In a 2016 CATESOL Annual Conference presentation, Sokolowski goes into past interesting popular searches and the historical events that preceded their rise:

• After Princess Diana’s death, the most searched words were “paparazzi” and “princess.”
• After 9/11, the most searched words were “rubble,” “triage,” “terrorism,” and “surreal.”
• After the death of Michael Jackson, the most searched words were “stricken,” “resuscitate,” and “emaciated.”
• After gay marriage was legalized, the most searched words were “marriage” and “bigot.”
• After this last presidential election, the most searched words were “fascism,” “xenophobia,” “socialism,” “misogyny,” and “revenant.”

Though we can credit four out of five of the above words to the controversies that came out of the Trump vs. Clinton presidential race, the last word “Revenant” came from the film that was coming out that same year.

On July 31, Merriam-Webster tweeted that the top searches that morning were “collusion” and “conspiracy.”

What words have you looked up recently in a dictionary?

Follow Peter at https://twitter.com/petersokolowski
Follow Merriam-Webster at https://twitter.com/merriamwebster