Feminism Is Merriam-Webster 2017 Word Of The Year

Perhaps not surprisingly given the Women’s Marches that started 2017 and the #MeToo movement that erupted after the Harvey Weinstein scandal opened the floodgates for women who say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted, “feminism” is Merriam-Webster’s 2017 Word of the Year.

Searches for feminism on Merriam-Webster.com increased 70 percent from the year prior, and also spiked during key events. Entertainment also drove searches for the word, Merriam-Webster said in a news release. Searches for the word also spiked with the release of the movie “Wonder Woman” and Hulu’s series, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Noah Webster first put feminism in the dictionary in 1841, but its definition has changed from “the qualities of females” to “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes” and an “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests” in the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary.

“Our online dictionary gives us insight into the collective curiosity of the public, with millions of words looked up every month,” Merriam-Webster said of its quantitative analysis of word look-ups. “When we look back at the past twelve months and combine an analysis of words that have seen a rise over the previous year along with instances of intense spikes of interest because of news events, we see that one word stands out in both categories.”

The greatest spike was in January, when the Women’s March was held in Washington, D.C., and cities around the country the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

“The word was in the air,” Merriam-Webster said.

It spiked again in February when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said at a conservative conference that she didn’t consider herself a feminist “in the classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male and it certainly is very pro-abortion, in this context.”

The definition of feminism became the subject of a news story, which Merriam-Webster said was “an invitation for many people to look up the word.” Two other words — fact and complicit — also spiked with news stories.

While no word can encapsulate all of the news, events and stories of a given year, when a single word is looked up in great volume and is associated with multiple important stories, “we can learn something about ourselves through the prism of vocabulary,” Merriam-Webster said.

Other words looked up in great volume in 2017 were:

• Complicit
• Recuse
• Empathy
• Dotard
• Syzygy
• Gyro
• Federalism
• Hurricane
• Gaffe

Photo: A crowd fills Independence Avenue during the Women's March on Washington, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)