May 2005

April's Top Twenty

The list of the most frequently looked-up words at the Merriam-Webster Online Web site in April leads off as usual with effect and affect in the top spots but includes three newcomers—pontiff at No. 5, conclave at No. 9, and filibuster at No. 17—and one word, insipid, that took a big jump up to No. 3.

Get April's full Top Twenty word list—and the strange story behind insipid and a popular television show.

The Top Twenty most frequently looked-up words at the Merriam-Webster Online Web site in April:

1. effect
2. affect
3. insipid
4. love
5. pontiff
6. metaphor
7. integrity
8. ubiquitous
9. conclave
10. ensure
11. paradigm
12. irony
13. blog
14. empathy
15. esoteric
16. ambiguous
17. filibuster
18. paradox
19. facetious
20. cynical

Interest in pontiff and conclave peaked in the days leading up to and following the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. (For more on conclave, see this month's Word Profile.) Interest in filibuster picked up around the middle of the month and was still going strong as May began. Filibuster has quite a tangled story behind it, and you can read about it in this month's Word History of the Month.

And then there is insipid. On April 19th, the grouchy commentator on American Idol, Simon Cowell, described one contestant's performance as “insipid,” and within hours, insipid became one of the most looked-up words at the Web site and stayed that way for several days. And then a week later, Cowell used the word again to describe the same unfortunate contestant, and once again interest in the word spiked. American Idol as a vocabulary builder! Who'd a thunk it?


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