The bombings in London on July 7 offered many eerie parallels to the events of September 11, 2001, including the kind of words that people looked up. In the wake of the bombings, the entries for casualty, barbaric, condolences, soot, blast, and carnage were all heavily consulted. But the most looked up word was stoic, a word often used to describe the ways Londoners endured the bombing of their city during World War II. For more on stoic, see this month’s Beyond the Dictionary article.

Reports about the jailing of reporter Judith Miller on civil contempt charges prompted people to consult the entry for contempt. Subscribers to Merriam-Webster Unabridged were further directed to a range of related entries, including civil contempt, criminal contempt, and constructive contempt. More information about the various forms of contempt can also be found in this month’s Beyond the Dictionary.

Late in the month, Microsoft announced that the new name for the long-awaited Windows operating system codenamed Longhorn would be Windows Vista. That set people to looking up vista and perhaps to wondering if a word meaning “distant view” might be just the right name for software whose availability is still at least a year away.

Finally, on July 18, the Royal Institute for International Affairs issued a report about Great Britain’s support for the war in Iraq. A key problem, the report said, was that Britain was acting “as a pillion passenger compelled to leave the steering to the ally in the driving seat.” Pillion passenger? What’s a pillion? It’s the British word for the passenger seat on a motorcycle. A lot of us learned a new word that day.