‘Integrity’ Often Questioned in ’05

From the evocative Tom Cruise-inspired term “jump the couch,” meaning to exhibit frenetic or bizarre behavior, to the less colorful but more complex “integrity,” the words and expressions Americans favored in 2005 are jockeying for position on linguists’ and dictionary editors’ year-end lists.

If you read this article online at work, that’s “infosnacking,” Webster’s New World College Dictionary’s choice for 2005 word of the year.

And you have Bucks County “American Idol” contender Anthony Fedorov to thank for putting “insipid” on Merriam-Webster Online’s list of most-looked-up words.

If you’re puzzled over how a basic word like “integrity” ended up as 2005’s most looked up on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, president and publisher John M. Morse explains that Americans are a bit deeper than you might think.

The top 10 words people look up are not newly coined, slang or tech terms, Morse says, but abstract words having to do with human thought or behavior, often beginning with a vowel and containing an obvious classical root. Interest in them is propelled by news events.

“Integrity” slowly moved up the list from fourth place in 2003 to first place in 2005 as ethics scandals continued to rock corporations, government and sports, Morse says.

“It’s a concept and word that is of increasing relevance and increasing importance to people to the point where they want to refine their understanding of the word. I think it’s a very good thing.”

Hurricane Katrina, fears of the bird flu, and the deaths of Pope John Paul II and brain-damaged Terri Schiavo influenced our language this year, giving us words such as “pre-Katrina,” “post-Katrina” and “Katrinagate,” and reviving usage and prompting curiosity over terms such as “pandemic,” “conclave” and “feeding tube.”

The word “refugee” ended up on two popular-word lists this year, Merriam-Webster Online’s Top 10 List and as a candidate for the American Dialect Society’s words of the year. Morse says “refugee” gained notoriety as the nation wrestled with how to describe people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

In September, “refugee” outran “tsunami” on Merriam-Webster Online, with more than 100,000 hits.

The American Dialect Society, a 116-year-old organization of linguists, meets in January to vote on words and phrases it thinks best reflect the language and preoccupations of the previous year.

Among this year’s candidates: “flee-ancee” for a runaway bride; “muffin top” for the bulge of flesh over low-rider jeans; “feeding tube,” “conclave” and “Iraqitize.”

Popular culture’s influence on the lexicon is apparent in the fact that “insipid” shot into top-10 contention at Merriam-Webster Online after “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell pronounced Fedorov’s performance as “pleasant, safe and a little insipid.” When Cowell repeated the word in his critique of Fedorov the following week, it set off another round of look-ups for “insipid,” which stayed in the top 50 for two months.

In a show of the power of the news, Morse says the Merriam-Webster Online editors rushed to count hits on their website immediately after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones referred to the theory of intelligent design as “breathtaking inanity” when he rendered his decision in Pennsylvania’s landmark evolution versus creationism case last week.

They found that “inanity” had shot up to third place in the most-looked-up word sweepstakes.

Not all of the words linguists pick up on in any year will wind up in the dictionary, however. Inclusion requires meeting the test of time for a foothold in speech and print.

That’s why the Webster’s New World College Dictionary’s 2005 favorite probably won’t be found in the next edition, says editor in chief Mike Agnes. When the editors spotted the word “infosnacking” late last year in an Associated Press story, they thought the term for acquiring discrete bits of information on various websites during office hours might stick. It didn’t.

Flame-outs are part of the fluidity of language, Agnes says.

“Infosnacking” was trendy, he says. “It was interesting and amusing and it made us think. Those are the criteria for word of the year. It had an interesting history, and it points up what can happen with the various coinages. As dictionary publishers, we really don’t try to predict the future. We report the news after the fact.”