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Dictionary.com picks 'complicit' as word of the year

Nov 27, 2017 3:45 pm

Dictionary [dot] com has announced its Word of the Year for 2017 is "complicit." The word, meaning “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others; having a partnership or involvement in wrongdoing," was chosen because of its impact on the language, and as a symbol of the year's most meaningful events and lookup trends. Daily searches for the word at Dictionary [dot] spiked for the first time on March 12, with a 10,000 percent increase. That occurred the day after Saturday Night Live aired a parody ad featuring Scarlett Johansson as first daughter Ivanka Trump, peddling a perfume called Complicit. Lookups increased by 11,000 percent on April 5, the day after an interview with the real Ivanka Trump aired on CBS This Morning, in which she attempted to redefine complicit as "wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact." Other terms that showed up in the website's trending searches this year included climate change, global warming, carbon dioxide, white supremacist, nazi, neo-nazi, anti-fascist and Antifa. Read the full release at Dictionary [dot] com.