What Merriam-Webster’s ‘Word of the Year’ for 2009 Says About Our Vocabulary

Admonish is Merriam-Webster's 2009 word of the year

The Merriam-Webster word of the year is “Admonish.” Dating from the 14th century, admonish means “to indicate duties or obligations to or to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner.” The second definition provided on Merriam-Webster online is “to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement to.”

Merriam-Webster’s decision, which follows on the heels of The New Oxford’s American Dictionary’s word of the year choice of “unfriend,” is determined by search popularity on the dictionary’s web site. Oxford, on the other hand, comes to their word of the year by employing the judgment of a group of lexicographers who find a word that has sustained ubiquity in the shared vocabulary and that is not in the Oxford dictionary but will then be added. Congratulations to Facebook on unfriend. A search for the same word on Merriam-Webster online informs the searcher that the word can be found on Merriam-Webster Unabridged, a website where it seems the outsider words go to live.

According to an AP story on the announcement of the word, admonish took the cake because of the surge in searching for the word after Republican senator Joe Wilson howled out “You lie” during Obama’s speech on health care in September of this year. The White House admonished Wilson’s outburst. And the general public and those whose voices are heard on the Internet felt they should admonish Wilson for his spontaneous accusation toward the president. So the word was searched on Merriam-Webster consistently. According to Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, one of the reasons was searchers were looking to discern the nuanced differences between admonish and words like “scold” and “rebuke,” which were also frequently used in discussing Wilson-Gate 2009. It is true that the incessant searching for admonish says something about the people’s mindset and their collective curiosity in relation to socio-political events. In fact, all the words that made the 2009 word of the year list for Merriam-Webster were related to news articles or a major event of the past year. Runners up included inaugurate, pandemic, furlough, and rogue.

But the fact that these words were looked up so much also says a lot about the average Merriam-Webster online user’s dearth of vocabulary knowledge. I feel great for admonish, and even for Merriam-Webster’s 2008 word of the year, “bailout,” but why don’t people know what these words mean? I realize that for a certain percentage of the population, the search is to find the etymology of the word or the part of speech, and it’s good they are being looked up on Merriam-Webster’s web site–it’s good to look up the definition of a word if uncertain of the meaning–but admonish is not a difficult word and it’s definition should be known to the general population. A quick google search has admonish listed in several places as a seventh grade level vocabulary word. Now, I have effectively put my foot up my ass if the multitudes searching for admonish on Merriam-Webster are 7th graders and below. But I doubt this is the case. I would, however, love to see a demographic break down of who is searching for the word admonish on Merriam-Webster’s web site. I realize that this stance might welcome being called a name that was thrown around a lot in 2008 and 2009, “elitist,” but shouldn’t the words we look up be more complex, more challenging? Even solicitous, one of the words used in the definition of admonish, is more difficult than the word it defines.

via Merriam-Webster Announces ‘Word of the Year’ for 2009.