Stop 'fascism' becoming word of the year, urges US dictionary

Things aren’t looking up … Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries. Photograph: Getty Images

The US dictionary Merriam-Webster has implored word-lovers to help prevent “fascism” becoming its word of the year.

The Twitter feed for the dictionary, which picks its word of the year according to popularity in online search, announced: “There’s still time to look something else up.”

'Fascism' is still our #1 lookup.

# of lookups = how we choose our Word of the Year.

There's still time to look something else up.

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 29, 2016

People responded by suggesting other, more cheering, terms to look up:

@MerriamWebster @samanthavicent I've searched "puppies" 523 times in the past 30 minutes. Anything change?

— Carter Bryant (@CarterthePower) November 29, 2016

Meanwhile, one tweeter spoke for many when she wrote: “I wish people had looked it [fascism] up a month ago”. (The day after the EU referendum vote in the UK, the search term “what is the EU?” briefly spiked on Google search.)

@MerriamWebster I wish people had looked it up a month ago. :(

— Michelle P Kern (@MichellePKern) November 29, 2016

Merriam-Webster suggested that people might wish to look up “flummadiddle” en masse to push fascism from the number one spot. According to the Merriam-Webster website, Flummadiddle means “nonsense” or “trash”. There was no word on whether this was a more oblique response to the US president-elect’s policies.

Global politics has influenced other dictionaries’ words of the year. Oxford Dictionaries’ choice, which was “post-truth”, is defined as: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.

Dictionary.com’s word of the year – just as depressing a result as fascism would be – was “xenophobia”.

Cambridge Dictionary went for “paranoid”. Collins plumped for Brexit.

Other shortlisted terms from various dictionaries included “alt-right”, “Trumpism” and “snowflake generation”. It all seems a world away from Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2015 which was actually an emoji: tears of joy.