The Words of the Week - Jan. 17

‘Waterboarding’

Waterboarding saw a spike in lookups on Tuesday morning during the confirmation hearing for incoming president Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

During the widespread protests following George Floyd’s death in 2020, Hegseth supported ordering active-duty troops to put down riots. And like Trump, Hegseth has also praised waterboarding as an “effective” tactic.
— Kaanita Iyer, CNN Wire, 14 Jan. 2025

Waterboarding is an interrogation technique usually regarded as a form of torture in which water is forced into a detainee’s mouth and nose so as to induce the sensation of drowning.

‘Woke’

Woke is usually among the top lookups of any given day, but lookups were especially high this week, possibly—as with waterboarding—in connection with Senate confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth, as it is a word he has invoked in the past.

Hegseth, a 44-year-old former Fox News host and veteran, could face tough questions about his personal life and past, including his reported history of heavy drinking, his treatment of women and a sexual assault allegation filed against him eight years ago. Senators’ sights are also trained on Hegseth’s past comments opposing women serving in combat roles, which he walked back in the run-up to the hearing. A cultural critic of the military, Hegseth has accused the Pentagon of relaxing its personnel and training standards and adopting so-called “woke” ideology.
— Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, 14 Jan. 2025

We define the adjective woke as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.

‘Norovirus’

Lookups for norovirus have been high in the midst of the current outbreak.

Cases of norovirus, commonly known as the stomach flu, have spiked in Central Jersey in the weeks after the holiday season. “We are seeing an uptick in cases of norovirus across the system,” said Christopher Freer, senior vice president of emergency and hospitalist medicine at RWJBarnabas Health.
— Sal DiMaggio, MyCentralJersey.com, 14 Jan. 2025

Norovirus refers to any of a genus (Norovirus) of small, round, single-stranded RNA viruses that includes a single species (species Norwalk virus) with various strains causing gastroenteritis in people and animals (such as cows, pigs, and dogs). In people, noroviruses cause gastroenteritis marked chiefly by sudden onset of diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and abdominal cramps.

‘Santa Ana’

Santa Ana saw higher than usual lookups in connection with the ongoing wildfires in southern California.

Fire-ravaged Los Angeles in path of dangerous Santa Ana winds
— (headline), West Hawaii Today, 14 Jan. 2025

We define the noun Santa Ana as “a strong hot dry foehn wind from the north, northeast, or east in southern California. The first known use of Santa Ana for this wind appeared in 1880. Foehn is defined as “a warm dry wind blowing down the side of a mountain” and also first appeared in English in the late 1800s.

‘Oligarchy’

Oligarchy became a top lookup late in the week after President Joe Biden used the word in his farewell address.

Biden sounded the alarm about oligarchy as some of the world’s richest individuals and titans of its technology industry have flocked to Trump’s side in recent months, particularly after his November victory. Billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $100 million helping Trump get elected, and executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have donated to Trump’s inaugural committee and made pilgrimages to Trump’s private club in Florida for audiences with the president-elect as they seek to ingratiate themselves with his administration and shape its policies.
— Zeke Miller et al., The Associated Press, 16 Jan. 2025

Oligarchy, which we define as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes,” is one of numerous English words for a type of rule or government. Some of these words, such as plutocracy, have an exceedingly similar meaning (both may be used to refer to rule by an economic elite, but oligarchy often has the additional connotation of corruption).

Word Worth Knowing: ‘Medlar’

Medlar refers to the crab apple-like fruit of a small deciduous Eurasian tree (Mespilus germanica) of the rose family, and we’re going to level with you: “crab apple-like” is a very polite way to describe this quirky fruit. Over the centuries, what the Oxford English Dictionary refers to as its “gaping apex and persistent calyx-lobes” have led to the medlar being called by a host of less savory names that we will refrain from repeating here, thank you very much. But don’t let cheeky sobriquets take away your appetite—once properly softened (by frost or storage), medlars have a tart, apple-like flavor, perhaps unsurprising for a fellow member of the rose family. The word medlar traces back all the way to the Greek mespilon, used for the same fruit.

When ready to harvest, the golf-ball-size fruits resemble small apples, except … their calyx ends (opposite the stem ends) are flared open. This latter characteristic earned medlar the nickname “open-arse fruit” among medieval writers such as Chaucer.
— Lee Reich, Associated Press, 5 Nov. 2019