The Words of the Week - October 25

‘Arnold Palmer’

Arnold Palmer lookups rose over the weekend and early this week following lewd remarks made about the golfer (not the drink named after the golfer) by former president Donald Trump at a campaign speech.

What did Trump say about Arnold Palmer being ‘all man’?
— (headline), The Erie (Pennsylvania) Times-News, 21 Oct. 2024

We define Arnold Palmer as “a cold beverage of iced tea mixed with lemonade.” The drink was named, of course, after the late American professional golfer Arnold Palmer, who in addition to his golf game and his predilections for potables is apparently famous for other things that are none of our business.

‘Fascism’

Fascism is often among the top lookups, but has seen even greater attention this week, likely due to the release by the New York Times of several audio interviews with John Kelly, former White House chief of staff during Donald Trump’s presidency.

When asked if Trump was a fascist, Kelly read out the Wikipedia definition of Fascism and said that the former president certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure. Kelly said in his experience, fascism is the kind of thing that Trump thinks would work better in terms of running America, adding that the former president was certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators.
— Siladitya Ray, Forbes, 23 Oct. 2024

We define fascism (sometimes capitalized Fascism) specifically as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, and that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition,” and more broadly as “a philosophy or system with some combination of fascist values and governing structures.”

‘Listeria’

News about a frozen waffle recall led to a spike in lookups for listeria.

TreeHouse Foods issued a voluntary recall last Friday for its frozen waffle products that are sold at many retailers across the U.S. and Canada due to the products being linked to a potential listeria contamination. … “This issue was discovered through routine testing at our manufacturing facility in Brantford, Ontario, Canada,” Howard Karesh, a spokesperson for TreeHouse Foods, said in a statement. “There have been no confirmed reports of illnesses or injuries linked to the recalled products.”
— Gabe Hauari and Ahjané Forbes, USA Today, 22 Oct. 2024

Listeria refers to any of a genus (Listeria) of small, rod-shaped bacteria that do not form spores and have a tendency to grow in chains and that include one (Listeria monocytogenes) that causes listeriosis. Listeria is also used as a synonym of listeriosis in referring to a disease or sickness caused by infection with this bacterium. Listeria comes from the surname of Joseph Lister, a British surgeon and medical scientist who was the founder of antiseptic medicine and a pioneer in preventive medicine.

‘October surprise’

It’s October in a presidential election year, which as usual means that lookups for October surprise have been on the rise.

Richard Nixon shipwrecked President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1968 11th-hour maneuvering to arrange for Paris peace talks over the Vietnam War to boost Democratic Party presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign worried over political maneuvers by President Jimmy Carter to secure the release of American hostages held by Iran in the American embassy in Tehran on the eve of the November presidential election. Thereafter, the term “October surprise” entered the American political lexicon, implying that a presidential candidate or third party would be tempted to execute or scuttle something politically explosive on the eve of the election in an attempt to determine the result.
— Armstrong Williams, The Baltimore Sun, 23 Oct. 2024

We define October surprise not as “getting a full-sized candy bar in your trick-or-treat bag” (we wish!) but as “a significant revelation or event in the month prior to an election that has the potential to shift public opinion about an election candidate and that is often orchestrated to influence the election's outcome.” October surprise usually relates to U.S. presidential elections that occur in the month of November, and evidence of its first use in print dates to 1980.

‘Blob’

A strange story out of the North Atlantic has led to an (amorphous) bump in lookups for blob.

On an ordinary day, beachcombers roaming the rocky shores of Newfoundland can hope to find treasures like mermaid’s purses, barnacle shells and a rainbow’s worth of sea-polished glass fragments. The oddest thing might be the occasional moose teeth, tools or even a doll’s head. Weird, white mystery blobs are another matter. … The blobs range in size from a coin to a dinner plate. They come in an almost pristine white before mixing with sand and turning darker. They are sticky. And they are—this is the main thing—indisputably blobby.
— Alan Yuhas, The New York Times, 23 Oct. 2024

We define blob broadly as “something shapeless,” and more specifically as “a small drop or lump of something viscid or thick” and “a daub or spot of color.” Our Unabridged dictionary defines blobby as “covered or filled with blobs,” “made up of blobs,” and—most relevant to the mysterious substance found in Newfoundland—“like a blob.”

Word Worth Knowing: ‘Bruja’

Bruja has been referring to witches in English since the 19th century, but it was doing that job in Spanish long before that. Unlike most Spanish words, bruja (and its masculine counterpart brujo) comes not from Latin but from a non-Indo-European source, from an unknown word that is also ancestor to Portuguese bruxa and Catalan bruixa, meaning “witch.” It is unrelated to brouhaha, which is a borrowing from French, though brujas can certainly brew up a brouhaha on occasion (ha ha).