Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Flotsam and Jetsam Query me this
Posted by Sam Worley on 12.21.11 at 01:08 PM
- Chris Dlugosz
The second most searched word, “ambivalence,” is one for all seasons—when can’t you find something to be ambivalent about? Going down the list, it’s fun to link each entry to its 2011 inspiration: “insidious” was also the name of a horror movie; “didactic” was how everybody described Newt Gingrich. Both “capitalism” and “socialism” appear, and so does "apres moi le deluge," an inclusion that can apparently be traced to one CNN.com column by David Gergen, who was talking about the debt supercommittee. “Austerity,” which was last year’s most searched word, is this year's number five. These are darkening times: in 2007 the most searched word was “w00t.”
Editors also singled out “mercurial,” used variably to describe Steve Jobs, Kim Jong-il, Keith Olbermann, and Moammar Gadhafi. And Tribune reporter Heidi Stevens got into the game, too, with a few Chicago-specific suggestions. Most have to do with Rahm Emanuel, but Stevens does give a little space to the city’s epic February snowstorm, which she says brought us “snowpocalypse” and “snowmageddon.” This is clearly incomplete, though. Everybody knows that thing was called the “blizzaster.”
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