Love, karma, and virtue are on the list, but so are cynical and fallacious. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC, the publisher of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com announced today the top word searches for 2005 from A to Z. Dictionary.com’s list of the most popular word searches for 2005 also features a list of the most popular new words added to Dictionary.com for the year including ‘geek chic,’ ‘phishing,’ and ‘nanoscience.’
"When emerging technologies or current events bring a word to our attention, it’s no surprise," said Brian Kariger, CEO of Lexico. "We want to learn about phishing, podcasting, levees, and pandemics because we hear about them in the news. And yet it’s remarkable how stable our language is, and how often our 19 million users return to the same words and concepts that they found fascinating in the past."
"Of this year’s most searched words, karma is particularly poignant," said Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD., Lexico’s chief lexicographer and editor. "We each need to remember that every thought, word, and deed has a consequence — which is what karma is all about. In addition, when we look at our logs to see what are each year’s most popular words in lookups, we are surprised at how similar they are from year to year. Though we are often boggled at language change, we are equally amazed at how much stays the same."
A complete list of the most popular words searched and new words can be found at: https://www.dictionary.com/features/dictionaryalphabet2005.html
About Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
Founded in 1995, Lexico Publishing Group, LLC is a leading provider of online reference services, including Dictionary.com, called "the best general English-language dictionary online" by Web Guide magazine; the Dictionary.com Word of the Day Mailing List, a daily e-mail vocabulary lesson; Thesaurus.com, the award-winning online version of Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases; Reference.com, a general reference guide and almanac; and CleverKeys, free software that gives instant access to definitions and synonyms from Windows and Macintosh programs. Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com combined to serve more than 19 million unique visitors in November 2005. The Word of the Day Mailing List has more than 845,000 subscribers.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on December 15, 2005
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