The Words of the Week - Mar. 21
Dictionary lookups from weather, government, and St. Patrick’s Day
‘Erin go bragh’
Lookups for Erin go bragh spiked on Monday, St. Patrick’s Day.
This St. Patrick's Day, bring a touch of Irish culture to your celebrations by preparing a hearty and comforting traditional Irish Guinness stew, featuring tender chunks of lamb, nubby pearl barley, fresh herbs, and slowly simmered vegetables in a rich stout gravy. … Enjoy with a crusty loaf of bread, so you can mop up every last drop. Erin go bragh!
—Lauren Flaum, The Stillwater (Minnesota) Gazette, 16 Mar. 2025
On St. Patrick’s Day, people often turn to their dictionary to look up Erin go bragh, which means “Ireland forever.” The original Irish phrase was Erin go brách (or go bráth), which translates literally as “Ireland till doomsday.” It’s an expression of loyalty and devotion that first appeared in English during the late 18th-century Irish rebellion against the British.
‘Unalienable’
Lookups for unalienable were high early in the week, likely in relation to news surrounding the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Reviving the Alien Enemies Act, however, would be more than a legal violation. It would be a betrayal of American values to target people for detention and deportation without any evidence of misconduct and based principally on where they were born. … As President Bill Clinton wrote when apologizing for the treatment of Japanese Americans, “We must learn from the past and dedicate ourselves as a nation to renewing the spirit of equality and our love of freedom.” Now is the time to live up to these values—the promise that the United States can learn from its mistakes to form a more perfect union. The promise of due process and equal justice under the law. The promise is that all people are created equal and have certain unalienable rights.
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We define unalienable as “impossible to take away or give up.” It is less commonly used than its synonym, inalienable, despite featuring prominently in the United States Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
‘Tornado’
Tornado has seen higher-than-usual lookups as deadly tornadoes have recently struck portions of the United States, and as March marks the beginning of tornado season.
Rain, snow, hail, dust, fire, tornadoes. A giant cross-country storm system last week led to one hazard after another, lashing California with an atmospheric river, fueling wildfires in Oklahoma and spawning tornadoes from Missouri to Alabama.
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Tornado in this case refers to “a violent destructive whirling wind accompanied by a funnel-shaped cloud that progresses in a narrow path over the land,” although the word is occasionally used loosely to refer simply to a violent windstorm. Tornadoes (tornados is also acceptable as a plural) differ in a number of ways from hurricanes. Although both may have winds that are hundreds of miles an hour, a tornado is restricted to land, and comparatively small (usually traveling 10 or 20 miles); a hurricane forms over water in tropical oceans, and can be as much as a thousand times larger than a tornado.
‘Rebuke’
Rebuke rose in lookups following a statement made by Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement Tuesday rebuking President Donald Trump and his allies for calling to impeach judges who have ruled against the administration.
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We define two closely related senses of the verb rebuke: “to criticize sharply, reprimand” and “to serve as a rebuke [an expression of strong disapproval] to.” We also define an archaic use of the word meaning “to turn back or keep down.”
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Spanghew’
This is a brief note, before getting into the particulars of this word (meaning “to throw (a frog) into the air from the end of a stick”), alerting all of our readers to the fact that while we may define words on the subject of frog-tossing, we are very much opposed to the practice of such. Please do not be mean to frogs.
Although it originally involved an unsavory pastime in which sticks were used to hurl frogs into the air, spanghew has had other meanings as well. For example, one 19th century report refers to a particular horse’s insistence on “spang-hewing” its riders. (Spang, by the way, is a verb in its own right. It’s mostly used in Scotland and means “throw” or “jump”).
I am not, in the noble vernacular of Newcastle, going to set myself seriously to spanghew a paddock, but we sometimes hear the same hackneyed phrase about anonymous correspondents used by persons much better entitled to charitable correction.
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