We all have those words. The ones you hesitate to say because you've only ever seen them written (which have a large overlap with the ones you realize you've been using wrong for your entire life). Where do you go to be enlightened? To the dictionary, of course.
Merriam-Webster editor-in-chief Peter Sokolowski says the data from those lookups can move words onto a list of ones to watch - a status recently achieved by "thirst trap."
The dictionary's own social media strategy has been making headlines across the internet of late, but Sokolowski says this is more a matter of lexicography than of politics. When it comes to simple words that have made the news, like complicit or even fact: "It's the dictionary's job to call balls and strikes. When thousands of people are looking up these words, it's an implicit question that they're asking us. And we have answers."
