Merriam-Webster Announces 2018 Word of the Year — and It's a Low-Key Dig at President Trump

Folks have been very curious about the exact definition of “justice” over the course of 2018, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster said in a press release on Monday.

A 74 percent increase in searches over the previous year made it Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2018. The dictionary publisher explained that topics related to President Donald Trump are largely responsible for “justice” skyrocketing to the top.

“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. In any conversation about these topics, the question of just what exactly we mean when we use the term justice is relevant, and part of the discussion,” said Merriam-Webster.

“This year’s news had many stories involving the division within the executive branch of government responsible for the enforcement of laws,” the publisher continued.

Merriam-Webster highlighted how special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia — which the president often refers to as a “witch hunt” — is run through the Justice Department. Plus, President Trump’s controversial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court ended with Kavanaugh becoming a justice, despite multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, all of which Kavanaugh has denied.

“Justice has varied meanings that do a lot of work in the language — meanings that range from the technical and legal to the lofty and philosophical,” said Merriam-Webster. “For many reasons and for many meanings, one thing’s for sure: justice has been on the minds of many people in 2018.”

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A few other top terms released by the publisher are also connected to politics. For example, searches for “nationalism” spiked 8,000 percent after the former Apprentice star used the term at a rally in Texas in late October, according to the publisher.

“I’m a nationalist, okay? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist. Nothing wrong. Use that word. Use that word,” Trump said.

Next came “lodestar,” one of Vice President Mike Pence’s favorite words. “Lodestar” appeared in an anonymous New York Times op-ed allegedly written by a senior White House official, which led Twitter users to obsess over whether Pence was the author. The opinion piece famously slammed the president’s morality and claimed there was a resistance movement against Trump in the White House. (Pence denied writing the op-ed.)

And who could forget when Samantha Bee called first daughter Ivanka Trump, an advisor to the president, a “feckless c—“ in May? The Full Frontal with Samantha Bee segment came amid outrage over migrant children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. With Scottish roots, “feckless” means “ineffective” or “useless,” according to the dictionary maker. Bee later apologized for the comment, but the word still landed at No. 5 on the list.

The last political reference on the list is “maverick,” the nickname associated with late Arizona Sen. John McCain. When he died of brain cancer at age 81 on Aug. 25, searches “spiked” and pushed the term to No. 9, Merriam-Webster said. The word means “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party,” and McCain earned it by standing up to his fellow Republicans. The term’s political connotation goes as far back as the 1880s, according to the publisher.