Say what you will about the 45th President of the United States, but one thing he has accomplished is a new surge in reference material usage. Dictionaries and thesauri are getting more new visitors each day than they have in decades. This interesting information came to us from The Meridian Star and Dana Milbank’s syndicated column, “My word, Trump spurs rash of dictionary lookups.”
Merriam-Webster is a great example. They have shown that a word can be worth 50,000 retweets, as demonstrated when it responded to Conway’s “alternative facts” remark by saying: “A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality.” After Conway said she was uncomfortable being called a feminist, Merriam-Webster tweeted: “‘Feminism’ is defined as the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.”
After former national security adviser Michael Flynn sought an agreement to testify in the Russia probe, Merriam-Webster reported that “immunity” was trending.
Who knew a dictionary yielded such power? Well, we did, of course.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
