Love is a perennial in the top twenty or so looked-up words and shows an annual peak in February. Affect and effect are seldom out of the top ten in any month. The relative newcomers this month include whether and complement, both easily confused with homophones. But politic? It's a curious word to see shoot to the top.

Body politic, meaning "a group of persons politically organized under a single governmental authority," has its own entry in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, Unabridged, and Online dictionaries, but the slightly odd placement of the adjective after the noun may make politic the word one might seek. Politics also has its own entry, and some research may start by entering the word without an "s." Politic as an adjective meaning "shrewdly tactful" is much less commonly encountered, but a combination of all three terms may be behind the swift rise of politic.