"Socialism" the most looked up word of 2012 [View all]

[limpyhobbler]

Merriam-Webster Inc., America's leading dictionary publisher, has announced the Top Ten Words of the Year. Based on the volume of user lookups at Merriam-Webster.com, this list sheds light on topics and ideas that sparked the nation's interest in 2012.

Two words, socialism and capitalism, share the top spot due to discussion and debate around the presidential election. Socialism saw its largest lookup spikes during coverage of healthcare but also saw peaks in the days following both conventions and each of the presidential debates. Capitalism, although looked up somewhat less often, rode the same waves of interest.

"We saw a huge spike for socialism on Election Day itself, but interest in both words was very high all year," says Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large at Merriam-Webster. "Lookups of one word often led to lookups of the other."

The word socialism refers to governmental ownership and administration of the production and distribution of goods. Capitalism refers to private or corporate ownership of the tools used to make and transport products whose prices are set by competition on the free market.
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from http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/2012words.htm

Probably just the o'reilly Factor audience was looking it up to see what they were in for after Obama got re-elected.
PS I don't really like this definition of socialism so much.