While the 2016 presidential campaign has already been labeled a circus and graced late-night TV with plenty of comedic fodder, it seems that this particular race to the White House is the gift that keeps on giving, as it may actually be making people smarter.
Merriam-Webster.com has reported a surge in searches related to the political race, citing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as the candidates using ‘big words’ and driving traffic to the online dictionary.
Back in July, GOP candidate Lindsey Graham made headlines calling Donald Trump a “wrecking ball” and said his party should reject Trump’s immigration remarks as those of a “demagogue.”
While your intellectual friends were shaking their heads in agreement, railing on Trump’s demagoguery, it seems that more than half of them were secretly searching “what is a demagogue” on their smartphones.
On July 17, the online search of the word spiked when Trump called out Gov. Rick Perry in a tweet for his misuse of it.
Hillary Clinton also sent people online searching when a batch of e-mails from her now infamous server was released in which she referred to House Speaker John Boehner as “louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle.”
While many could infer from the context of the following not-so-flattering descriptions of Boehner, “louche” was such a popular search term that Merriam-Webster took to Twitter earlier this week to let everyone know the word was trending.
“Louche” is still spiking this morning. https://t.co/w6I02JTZVf
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 2, 2015
“The top lookups tend to be news-driven, and as we ramp up into election season, more of the lookups are related to the nominee contenders. ‘Louche’ is one example, but there are probably a good dozen that have spiked recently,” Korey Stamper, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster, told POLITICO.
“Hobson’s Choice” spiked on August 13 when an op-ed published about Clinton’s e-mails said that her actions dealt her a “Hobson’s Choice” (which is “a situation in which you are supposed to make a choice but do not have a real choice because there is only one thing you can have or do”).
This return to the dictionary is rare positive result of the already entertaining campaign, and bodes well not only for the comeback of the dusty dictionary on your shelf, but also for mother’s everywhere who tell their inquisitive kids to “look it up.”
“I’m sure that as we move forward, more lookups will be driven by the election. It’s going to be a long, verbose 14 months,” Stamper said.
*Cue ‘verbose‘ searches*
