Merriam-Webster Inc., America’s leading language reference publisher, has announced the year’s top ten words and definitions as culled from its popular Web site Merriam-Webster OnLine (https://www.merriam-webster.com/). The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year list is based on users’ anonymous hits to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus.
The number one word of the year, receiving the largest number of user requests by a wide margin, is "integrity," defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition as: "firm adherence to a code, especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility."
"Lookups for ‘integrity’ have steadily increased over the past few years, and this year it is clearly the most looked-up word," said John M. Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster. "We’re not sure how to account for the increase in interest in this particular word, except that people do often look up the meanings of words that have special significance to current events and issues. Perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch to think that recent political and social developments have made the word integrity particularly appropriate to issues that people are talking about."
As has been the case in the past, many of the top ten words on Merriam- Webster’s 2005 list come directly from news media headlines. The biggest event-related word of the year and holder of the #2 spot is "refugee." The ongoing conversation about the appropriateness of this word to describe people displaced by Hurricane Katrina made this the most heavily looked-up event- related word in the history of Merriam-Webster OnLine, outdoing the previous record-holder "tsunami" (#6) by a wide margin.
"Even reality television can have an impact on what words are looked up," said Morse, "if the show if popular enough, and the moment is memorable enough. When Simon Cowell on American Idol said of Anthony Federov’s performance that it was ‘pleasant, safe, and a little insipid,’ it set off a round of lookups for insipid (#5) that kept that word in the Top Fifty for two months."
Traffic to Merriam-Webster OnLine now encompasses 100 million individual page views per month. On average, the company responds to 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.
For the complete list of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year, including definitions, please visit https://www.merriam-webster.com/info/05words.htm. For additional information on the selection process, or to arrange an interview on this topic with John M. Morse, please contact Arthur J. Bicknell, Senior Publicist, at the above address.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
Merriam-Webster Inc. acquired the rights to revise and publish Noah Webster’s dictionaries in 1843. Since then, Merriam-Webster has maintained an ongoing commitment to innovation, scholarship, and love of language. Today, the company continues as the leader in both print and electronic language reference publishing with reference products, learning tools, and word games. For more information about the company, and about Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, visit Merriam-Webster OnLine at https://www.merriam-webster.com/.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on December 13, 2005
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