'Feminism' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year

Merriam-Webster has revealed "feminism" as its wordof the year.

In 2017, lookups for feminism increased 70 per cent over 2016 onMerriam-Webster.com and spiked several times after key events,lexicographer Peter Sokolowski, the company's editor at large, toldThe Associated Press ahead of Tuesday's annual word reveal.

There was the worldwide women's marchin January. And heading into the yearwas Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and referenceslinking her to white-clad suffragettes, along with her loss toPresident Donald Trump, who once boasted about grabbing women.

Canada, of course, has a self-declared feminist as its prime minister.

Other events that drew interest to the word feminism was thepopular TV seriesThe Handmaid's Taleand the blockbustermovieWonder Woman,directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins,Sokolowskisaid.

The #MeToomovement rose out of fallen movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's dust, andother "silence breakers" brought down rich and famous men ofmedia, politics and the entertainment worlds.

Feminism has been in Merriam-Webster's annual Top 10 for the pastfew years, including sharing word-of-the-year honours with other"isms" in 2015: socialism, fascism, racism, communism, capitalismand terrorism rounding out the bunch. "Surreal" was the word of theyear last year.

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"The word 'feminism' was being used in a kind of general way the feminism of this big protest,"Sokolowski said by phone from the company's headquarters inSpringfield, Mass. "Butit was also used in a kind of specific way: What does it mean to bea feminist in 2017? Those kinds of questions are the kinds ofthings, I think, that send people to the dictionary."

1st reference in 1841

Feminism's roots are in the Latin for "woman" and the word"female," which dates to 14th-century English. Sokolowski had tolook no further than his company's founder, Noah Webster, for thefirst dictionary reference, in 1841, which isn't all that old in thehistory of English.

"It was a very new word at that time," Sokolowski said. "Hisdefinition is not the definition that you and I would understandtoday. His definition was'The qualities of females' so basicallyfeminism to Noah Webster meant femaleness.

"We do see evidence thatthe word was used in the 19th century in a medical sense, for the physical characteristics of a developing teenager, before it wasused as a political term, if you will."

Webster added the word in revisions to his An AmericanDictionary of the English Language.They were his last. He died in1843. He also added the word "terrorism" that year.

"We had no idea he was the original dictionary source offeminism. We don't have a lot of evidence of what he was lookingat," Sokolowski said.

Today, Merriam-Webster defines feminism as the "theory of thepolitical, economic and social equality of the sexes" and
"organized activities on behalf of women's rights and interests."

The company would not release actuallookup numbers.

Some of therunners-up:

• Complicit, competitor Dictionary.com's word of the year.
• Empathy, which hung high all year.
• Dotard, used by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to describe Trump.
• Syzygy, the nearly straight-line configuration of threecelestial bodies, such as the sun, moon and Earth during a solar or lunar eclipse.
• Hurricane, which Sokolowski suspects is because people are confused about wind speed.
• Gaffe, such as what happened at the Academy Awards when the wrong best picture winner was announced last year.