Whether you love him or loathe him, you can’t argue with President Trump’s impact on the world in 2018. Or, more accurately, words.
The latest evidence? Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2018: “Justice”.
“The concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice,” the dictionary-maker wrote in a statement.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, added that the term “justice” frequently featured in the top 20 or 30 searches on the dictionary’s website, reports The Associated Press. These searches closely correlated to specific news events and major news stories, ranging from federal sentencing reform to Michael Cohen’s revelation that Trump ‘doesn’t tell the truth’.
Other words that garnered new attention included nationalism, pansexual, lodestar, and epiphany (although clearly not all of these are related to Trump).
Merriam-Webster’s choice comes on the heels of other politically-influenced words of the year. Earlier this year Dictionary.com chose “misinformation” as its word of the year, while Oxford Dictionaries chose “toxic.”