The good people at Merriam-Webster practically begged users to search for any word other than “fascism” so the dictionary company could avoid making it the word of 2016.
In a tweet posted Tuesday afternoon, the company said it’s on track to name fascism its word of the year. It really doesn’t want to do that.
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“‘Fascism’ is still our #1 look up,” Merriam-Webster tweeted. “# of lookups = how we choose our Word of the Year.”
It added, “There’s still time to look something else up.”
After many humorous responses to the tweet, one user accused Merriam-Webster of making the most desperate tweet possible to avoid having to make fascism its word of the year.
“No, ‘What if everyone committed to looking up ‘flummadiddle’ twice a day?’ is the most desperate-sounding tweet,” the company retorted.
Other dictionaries have already made their choice for word of the year.
The Oxford dictionary chose “post-truth” for its word of the year and Dictionary.com chose “xenophobia.”
