Merriam-Webster's word of the year totally sums up 2016

December is living its last days, which means the year 2016 is coming to an end. Ask anyone and they'll tell you 2016 has been the worst thing to hit planet Earth in a while.
The proof is all around us!

Capitalist sensation Donald Trump is the next President of the United States of America, and he wants to date his daughter--except he can't, because incest! Music legends Prince and David Bowie passed away, while the United Kingdom through a popular vote decided to no longer be a part of the European Union. In India, in the meantime, precious 500 and 1,000 rupee notes have been demonetized and queues outside for the new currency notes have been surmounting for new currency notes.

So naturally when the time came for the editors at Merriam-Webster to decide on a word to describe 2016, they chose surreal!

"It just seems like one of those years," said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor at large.

The company tracks year-over-year growth and spikes in look-ups of words on its website to come up with the top choice. This time around, there were many periods of interest in 'surreal' throughout the year, often in the aftermath of tragedy, Sokolowski said.

 

1) 'Surreal' is one of the most common lookups following a tragedy
2) 'Surreal' is our 2016 Word of the Yearhttps://t.co/O7azAyRQC1

- Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) December 19, 2016

Major spikes came after the Brussels attack in March and again in July, after the Bastille Day massacre in Nice and the attempted coup in Turkey. All three received huge attention around the globe and had many in the media reaching for 'surreal' to describe both the physical scenes and the 'mental landscapes', Sokolowski said.

The single biggest spike in lookups came in November, he said, specifically November 9, the day Donald Trump went from candidate to president-elect. There were also smaller spikes, including after the death of Prince in April at age 57 and after the June shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Webster's 'surreal' is competing with Oxford Dictionary's 'post-truth' and Dictonary.com's 'xenophobia'.

Other words that saw a spike in interest after global events and made it to Webster's top 10 list: bigly, deplorable, irregardless, icon, assumpit, for the record, revenant, and feckless amongst others.

Well, all we can say in the end is that Merriam-Webster is bang on with their choice, and because folks 2016 has truly been surreal. Forget everything else--have you looked at what's become of Toblerone?

 

We sympathize with Toblerone lovers who were sad after their beloved's shape and size changed!#CTPundole #Timekeepers #RotY2016 #Pune pic.twitter.com/IqEjPArbuC

- CT Pundole & Sons (@ctpundole) December 19, 2016

* If that's not surreal, we don't know what is!