Looking up most-looked-up words (except ‘peloton’)

JUNE CASAGRANDE

It’s a dark day for democracy, ladies and gentlemen. A dark day,

indeed. It seems that a key power-holder has been caught tampering

with the results of a crucial election. No, I’m not talking about

presidential balloting in Ohio or Florida. I’m talking about Merriam

Webster’s recently released list of the top 10 most-looked-up words.

I’ll let the Reuters story speak for itself.

“Merriam-Webster compiles the list each year by taking the most

researched words on its websites and then excluding perennials such

as affect/effect and profanity.”

All those nights I wasted typing in words I learned on bathroom

walls! Now we’ll never know whether the true winner was indeed a

recently coined technical term or a personal favorite of mine that

starts with the letter A.

All my attempts at protest have failed. Not even Howard Stern

showed up at the rally. So I guess we have no choice but to write

them off as a bunch of rotten A’s and accept the winner, which

Reuters ironically called, “A four-letter term that came to symbolize

the difference between old and new media during this year’s

presidential campaign.”

No, it’s not “bias.” It’s “blog.”

As I’ve written before, “blog” is short for “Web log,” which is a

type of online journal written by various and sundry wackos who

nonetheless have proved themselves more credible than either Dan

Rather or anyone who takes $240,000 from the president.

Blog’s position on top of the list isn’t surprising. But

runners-up 2 through 9 are:

2. incumbent

3. electoral

4. insurgent

5. hurricane

6. cicada

7. peloton

8. partisan

9. sovereignty

10. defenestration

In other words, name six words this Floridian political science

major cannot escape and three this language columnist has never heard

of. I mean, really, what’s a “hurricane?”

Seriously, the three on this list that are new to me are “cicada,”

“peloton” and “defenestration.” So now I’ll look them up, hoping that

the answers won’t be so embarrassingly obvious that I’ll regret the

above confession.

On second thought, let’s make this sporting. On a separate page,

I’ll write down my best guess as to what each of these means. Then

I’ll look up the dictionary definitions and show you my answers

alongside them.

Cicada: any of a family (Cicadidae) of homopterous insects, which

have a stout body, wide blunt head and large transparent wings, and

the males of which produce a loud buzzing noise usually by

stridulation.

I was close. I thought it was a new Latin pop star, which makes

more sense. A quick Yahoo! search for the cicada, which is pronounced

sick-ay-duh, pulls up websites such as “Cicada Mania” and “Cicada

Watch 2004.” I guess the elections were so distressing to people that

they decided bugs were a better use of their time.

Peloton: This one is clearly a plant by Merriam Webster’s. When I

type it into their online dictionary, they tell me that I have to

register with their site to retrieve the definition, which is funny

considering that they handed over “cicada” with the eagerness of a

convenience store clerk in a holdup. So I looked it up in American

Heritage online and also in my brand-new Webster’s New World

Dictionary’s electronic edition. Neither has ever heard of it. Only

Merriam Webster holds the key to this one, and they’re not telling

unless I give them a credit card number, my social security number

and my bra size.

We’ll just have to settle for my definition of peloton: a really

heavy jai alai ball.

And finally, we come to defenestration, which I see is: an act of

throwing someone or something out of a window.

I was way off on this one. I thought this was the secretary post

Condoleezza Rice has been angling for.

Too bad they nixed the profanity. I’d have scored an A on that

test.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Peloton is a French word common among cyclists,

meaning a densely packed group of riders.