May TOP TWENTY

The passing of the swine flu from the headlines brings us a list with fewer news-related terms this month. The school year is ending, and we see many old friends in the lookup list from May — words that are looked up on a consistent basis that don't seem to connect with events of the day or school-related assignments.

Looking Back: 1989

On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Army moved into Tiananmen Square and crushed the budding pro-democracy student movement. We mark the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square with a look at a few words for which the first printed evidence dates from 1989.

Interested in the full list of 40 words that turn 20 this year? Select the Collegiate as your reference, click on Advanced Search, type 1989 into the Date field and click on Search.

Notable and Quotable: John Hersey

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer John Hersey was born June 17 1914, days before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated the First World War. Hersey grew up to write Hiroshima, an account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb that is considered one of the finest pieces of twentieth-century journalism. He was also a novelist. His words also appear at 31 entries in the Unabridged dictionary — and here's a dozen colorful examples.

Interested in seeing all the quotations used to illustrate entries in the dictionary from a favorite author? Select the Unabridged and click on Advanced Search. Type the author's last name in the Author field, and click Search.

Report from the Open Dictionary

As the school year draws to a close, Open Dictionary contributors are adding terminology for school-age youth. Tween, meaning "preteen," (a blend of between and teen) is so last century; it dates to 1967. Try these newer coinages on for size. Or, submit your own to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary.

Just Foolin' Around

Of the 470,000 entries in the Unabridged, only 536 end with the letters i-o-u-s. Do we owe the shaky economy for bringing four of those "IOUs" onto last month's Top Twenty List? Certainly not: those words (facetious, pretentious, egregious, and tenacious) are perennial look-up favorites. But what's with the i-o-u-s words?

From the Mail Server

This past month, editors responded to someone curious about when a certain letter is a vowel or consonant, explained how Romance languages form compounds that become English words, and addressed an article of faith: that a and an have formal rules of usage.

In Case You Were Wondering

The Heimlich Maneuver turns 35 this month. Dr. Henry Heimlich is credited with first writing about his maneuver in 1974 (although the formal monograph dates to 1976). In case you were wondering, Heimlich keeps good company in the Medical Dictionary; that reference work is rich in medical eponyms ranging from Adams-Stokes syndrome to Zollinger-Ellison syndrome.

Interested in finding medical lingo named for MDs? Select the Medical Dictionary as your reference, then select Biography from the Search Type drop-down menu. Next, type physician into the search box; you'll get 202 entries. Two terms to tickle the humerus are bundle of His and sphincter of Oddi. Or do your own exploration by typing doctor, nurse, or surgeon into the Biography search box.

To Coin a Phrase

The June 6 anniversary of D-Day was commemorated with plenty of ceremony, but two other World War II anniversaries passed with little notice. Sir Winston Churchill made a number of memorable speeches during the war, and two made in the dark days of June, 1940 are among the most famous.