December TOP TWENTY

The list of the most frequently looked-up words at the Merriam-Webster Online Web site in December clearly shows the effect of our announcement of Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year for 2007 early in the month, but with a few twists. Here's the list.

Happy Birthday: 1838

These days, using electronically encoded messages is a hallmark of the Internet, but that concept was imagined — and officially instituted — on January 6, 1838, when Samuel F.B. Morse first demonstrated his telegraph. Plenty of the words that claim 1838 as a birth year telegraphed the colorful changing world of 170 years ago.

It's easy to find which words saw the first light of print in a particular year. Select the Collegiate as the reference, click on Advanced Search, type the year in the Date field, and click on Search.

Notable and Quotable: Edgar Allan Poe

American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. Credited as one of the forefathers of science fiction and the detective fiction genre, his words live on in the Unabridged as seen in these examples.

Interested in finding words from a favorite author in the dictionary? 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

Just weeks into 2008 and folks may be struggling to stick to their new year's resolutions. We can't help with that, but we can offer up some interesting reading with the word promise.

To find promise, select the Unabridged as your reference and click on Advanced Search. Then type promise in the Definition field and click on Search. The 214 entries range from abide to greener pastures.

From the Mail Server

Judging by the questions that came across the editorial desks over the past few weeks, folks spent the holidays wondering how to talk about places food is purchased and musing over the term for the room where food is prepared. In the midst of all that, at least one reader paused to wonder about the passage of time.

In Case You Were Wondering

Late last month, a Siberian tiger attacked three young men in the San Francisco Zoo. As we go to press, the jury is still out on whether Tatiana was provoked, but there's no debating the fact that the grisly event sent folks flocking to the dictionary to look up the word maul.

In case you were wondering, this maul has a history older than American zoos; it also has only the most tenuous linguistic link to the mall associated with shopping. Read on to find out more.

Words in the News

Last month's brutal assassination of prominent Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto sent news-watchers checking out the dictionary definition of the word shrapnel.

The etymology field on shrapnel reveals the word is an eponym, named for English artillery officer Henry Shrapnel, but there is still more to the story.

Language Links

Peter Mark Roget was born January 18, 1779. Of the many (various, myriad) ways a person might mark the birth of the man whose name is associated with the thesaurus, exploring online versions and technological spin-offs of Roget's work seems just about right.