April TOP TWENTY

There were some shake-ups in the list of the most frequently looked-up words at the Merriam-Webster Online Web site in April, as news events and controversies brought some new words to the list. See the entire list and what finally happened to google.

Looking Back: 1707

Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus was born May 23, 1707. What words also turn 300 years old this year? Of the fifty we found, we were able to classify eleven of them as of interest to once and future taxonomists.

Interested in words from a particular year? It's easy to categorize them. Select the Collegiate as your reference, click on Advanced Search, type the year into the Date field, and click Search.

Word History of the Month: diatribe, charlatan

Last month, folks turned to the dictionary to help make sense of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Frequent appearances in news reports earned charlatan and diatribe spots on the list of frequently looked-up words. It's unfortunate to be meeting these words under these circumstances, but their stories are interesting.

New Word Watch

Merriam-Webster editors are giving the following words serious consideration for entry in a Merriam-Webster dictionary:

*  ginormous adjective [gigantic + enormous] : extremely huge : humongous

*  instant messaging noun : a means or system for transmitting electronic messages instantly

*  speed dating noun : an event at which each participant converses individually with all prospective partners for a few minutes in order to select those with whom dates are desired

Do you have a suggestion for a word we should be watching for? E-mail us at comments@word.com, and we'll tell you what we have on that word so far.

Notable and Quotable: Katherine Anne Porter

Born in May 1890, Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Anne Porter wrote about the nature of evil and the darker side of humanity. A master of the short story, her words appear at 18 entries in the Unabridged Dictionary to illustrate words used in context. Here's a sampling.

Interested in finding examples of a favorite author in context? Select either the Unabridged or the Collegiate as a reference source, and click on Advanced Search. Type the last name of the author in the Author field, and click Search.

Just Foolin' Around

Memorial Day (then known as Decoration Day) was first observed in 1868, to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers. Today, soldiers from many more wars are honored. Using the search fields in the Collegiate Dictionary, we found 117 terms relating to soldiers, ranging from adventurer (a soldier of fortune) to yardbird (a soldier assigned to a menial task or restricted to a limited area as a disciplinary measure). We've pulled out a few particularly interesting ones.

Interested in the full list? Select the Collegiate as your reference source, then type soldier into the definition field and noun into the function field and click on Search.

From the Mail Server

Last month, editors didn't pussyfoot around about the story of the "sneaker" and they also gave a straightforward answer to the question of what you call words with meanings (when that word is spelled backwards). Finally, they jumped right onto the question of a word with wow.

In Case You Were Wondering

Soon after Don Imus made the news last month, the words misogyny and misogynist began receiving a significant number of look-ups. Misogyny names a hatred of women and misogynist names a person who hates women, but do similar terms exist for the hatred of men?

Language Links

This month marks 50 years of Merriam-Webster's sponsorship of the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee. In addition to testing yourself daily at our own Spelling Quiz http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/spquiz.pl and exploring the games available at our Premium Word Game site, http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/game/index.html, why not test yourself (and everyone in your family) this Bee Season with a series of quizzes http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/humanities/english/spelling_bee.html?