2016 WORDS OF THE YEAR
Which word will end up at the top of the pile?

“The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many words:  Of squrimishes - and trumpster fires - of neo-Nazi terms.”
 
Yes, that’s right.  It’s December again, and that means it’s time for the annual countdown of Words of the Year by the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (an online museum dedicated to America’s premiere lover – and master –  of words, Emmett Lee Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request).
 
You can review last year’s countdown HERE , and as you will see, “love” topped our list as 2015’s “Word of the Year.”   Yep, that’s right – “love” was our “word of the year.”  Remember “Love Wins”?  So we have just one question:  What. The Hell.  Happened? 
 
Now our choice of “love” as the 2015 WotY most def feels like a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and we can guarantee with absolute certainty that “love” will not make an appearance on our list this year – not even as an “honorable mention.”  Instead, we find that we will have to issue parental advisories for some of our 2016 word choices, and some of our words are indicative of the rise of the Alt-Right in America (that's the new, palatable middle-class way to say “Neo-Nazi”).
 
So check back throughout the month to see our complete list, and be sure to join us on New Year’s Eve at 12:00 noon (EST) as we reveal our the final “Word of the Year” for 2016!  
Picture
December 31:
Divided
Divided – a word that wholly and completely characterizes the world in 2016 in a bigly if not a yuge way – tops our list of Words of the Year.

First came the Brexit vote when a small majority in the UK supported a split from the European Union.
Then One Direction called it quits, and the boys flew off in five separate directions.
​Next, Branjelina shocked the world with their plans to revert back to being just Brad and Angelina
Finally, Donald Trump – while proclaiming he was a “great unifier” – drove a big-ass Trump-brand wedge through the heart of our country to the point that we should really consider changing our name to the Divided States of America. 
Now word on the street has it that Kim and Kanye are getting divorced.  Splits-ville. A conscious uncoupling.  It’s just too much to bear! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?  HOW CAN WE ALL GO ON?


​Our nation has never been so divided (except for maybe in the early 1860s), and now with the Kim & Kanye news (and with a rekindled nuclear arms race), how will we ever make it thorugh 2017?  Seriously. 

Please, Mr. Trump, since you are a great unifier, and you and you alone can fix things, please tell us your plan.  I know you know more than the generals, but I’m just not convinced your racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, homophobic, xenophobic, narcissistic, and mentally unstable ways will actually unify our country.  For now, though, I s’pose, that’s all we’ve got! 

​Tbh, I’m afraid to think what the Word of the Year for 2017 might be!
Pictured at the right:  Yikes!  Take a look at the Donald's New Year's greeting to the nation -- spoken like a true unifier.  Alas, as of 1/20/2017, the White House moves from class to crass, from civility to hostility, and from integrity to vulgarity.    Happy New Year everyone!

​For more on how we selected "divided" as the Word of the Year, click HERE. 
Two Strong Contenders for the 2016 Word of the Year:
Hypocrisy:  Yes, politicians have always epitomized hypocrisy, but GOP leaders took the art form of duplicity to "unpresidented"  levels this year:
RIP:  I saw a tweet that accepted the reality that we lose celebrities every year, but it lamented the fact that 2016 seemed to be out-pacing all previous years.
 
Then there was this:  “British art director Chris Barker put together this visual memorial to celebrities who died in 2016 using the memorable ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ album cover. He started in November with around 40 celebrities. It’s now at 82, with Debbie Reynolds the latest addition. He’s run out of room, he says.”  Info HERE. 
Late additions to the 2016 RIP list:

* Pan Pan -- the world's oldest male panda; info HERE.

* Queen Elizabeth --  but not really.  It was all part of a Twitter hoax; info HERE. 

* Bob Denver -- but not really.  He died back in 2005.  Another late-December Twitter hoax; info HERE.

* William Christopher -- Father Mulcahy from the TV show  "M*A*S*H" died at 5:10 a.m. on New Year's Eve.

One thing is for certain, though.  At midnight on New Year’s Eve, we won’t all yell “Happy New Year.”  Instead, I suspect, many of us will scream “RIP 2016!”

OTHER HONORABLE MENTIONS: 

Nasty Woman     Bad Hombres     Build the wall!     Get ‘em out!      
​Lock her up!      Poorly Educated     Pants Suit Nation
Cuck     Snowflake
December 30:
Email
Do you realize that it was way back in October of 2015 when, during a Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders barked, ““The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”   As a result, “email” made our list of Words of the Year last year, HERE (scroll down to December 21).
 
Evidently, though, the American people weren’t sick and tired of hearing about Clinton’s emails at all.  Instead, Trump riled up his supporters about the emails to the point where they frothed at the mouth.  “Lock her up!  Lock her up!” they’d chant, all because Clinton used a (perfectly legal) private email server.  Trump even went so far as to commit treason by calling on Russia to continue their hacking – and while Russia was busy hacking the DNC and other political organization of the Democratic Party, it turns out they missed Clinton’s private server altogether.  Go figure.
 
But Trump kept hammering away at Clinton’s emails, and his clan bought his whopper like the citizens of North Haverbrook hoping to buy a monorail from Lyle Lanley.  Then, at the 11th hour of the election, FBI Director James Comey came forward with his stunning statement to congress declaring that he was going to look into the email matter one more time.
Pictured at the right:  FBI Director James Comey speaks to Congress. The red MAGA hat should have tipped people off to his motives.  

​Comey held a personal vendetta against the Clintons dating back to 2001 when President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich for tax evasion.  Turns out that as an attorney in Manhattan, one of Comey’s first cases had been the successful prosecution against Rich.  "I was stunned," Comey later told Congress after he’d conducted a probe into the Rich pardon and 175 others Clinton had made at the end of his presidency. Though Comey found no criminal wrongdoing (as was usual in cases against the Clinton), he harbored his grudge for years.  More information is HERE, including the following:
"Yesterday, in a surprise to us all, Comey wrote a very strange letter to Congress that was long on innuendo and short on facts.  He said that in a completely separate investigation, the FBI had found some emails that may or may not be related to Hillary, and indeed may or may not be significant at all." 
Long on innuendo.  Short on facts.  No criminal wrong doing.  Facts just don’t seem to matter in the age of fake news and post-truth. As a result, Comey helped Russia land Trump in the White House.

Pictured below:  James Comey announced that the FBI had cleared Clinton AGAIN -- with less than a day and a half before the election.  He knew the damage was done -- but with this announcement, he could clear his conscience.
December 29:
Alt-Right
It’s kinda funny that the very people who gripe about political correctness have given themselves a very politically correct, sugar-coated name – the “Alt-Right.” Honestly, the alt-right is nothing more than neo-Nazis and white supremacists with a more palatable name – like “sweet breads.” Believe me, when you’re being served sweet breads, you are not about to dine on sweet breads.

As a matter of fact, the term "alt-right" was coined in 2010 by a white supremacist, Richard Spencer, to disguise overt racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism.

In the past coupla years, the Nazis...er, the Alt-Right...have infiltrated the GOP. And how did white, middle-America react? Why, they were completely duped if not charmed. “We’re not racists,” they’d assert, and they'd feign disdain when Hillary Clinton or anyone else referred to them as "deplorables.” Then they would don cute little t-shirts to pledge allegiance to the deplorables.

Good grief, the alt-right even admits that they “memed a President into office,” and that 2016 was “just the beginning for Warfare Media.” They’re even planning a celebration called the “DeploraBall” to celebrate the inauguration of Trump (at the National Press Club of all places). Like it or not, this is what white America supported in 2016. This is what white America bolstered and emboldened.

Did we not learn anything from Star Wars? Fear is the path to the Alt-Right. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. The outlook for 2017 is not good.
Pictured at the left: Members of the alt-right celebrated Trump's victory with a Hitler-like salute and a "Sieg heil" -- although Ms. Tequila misspelled it. So much for supremacy.
Pictured below : Info about the alt-right's upcoming DeploraBall.
Pictured left & bloew:  Awww...if you make the alt-right adorable enough, white America will join in...with a coy, "Shucks, we're not rascists."
"Calling Nazis and white supremacists the 'alt-right,'" said Seth Myers, "is like calling O.J. Simpson a 'cutlery enthusiast.'" HERE. 

​HONORABLE MENTION: 

Deplorables: Speaking at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City last September, Hillary Clinton said, "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables."
December 28:
​Hacked
“Hacked” made our list of Words of the Year once before, in 2014, when most hacks were against major corporations (Target, Michaels, etc.) or social media companies (Yahoo, Twitter, etc.).  Even Apple was hacked that year, and private photographs from celebrities' iPhones were released to the public. 
 
Of course, the big story in 2014 was when North Korea hacked into Sony accounts and demanded the cancellation of the release of Seth Rogan’s The Interview, a film which depicted an assassination mission against Kim Jong-un.  We still don't understand why North Korea didn't jst forget about The Interview and instead try to block the relase of Rogan's Neighbors. 
 
This year, though, the hacking reached even darker and more nefarious levels as Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations of the Democratic Party in an attempt to influence the election.  At one point, even candidate Trump himself committed treason by calling on Russia to hack the DNC and release additional emails.
​
December 27:
Rigged
What a set-up: For months Donald Trump set the stage for a rigged election. He grumbled about wide-spread voter fraud. He objected to problematic voting policies and practices. He questioned the legitimacy of the entire election process. The democrats and the media pounced on Trump saying that he was “playing with fire” (HERE).
When all was said and done, though, it turns out that the election was rigged – but not because the US political establishment was stacked against Trump. No. Instead, nefarious forces (from within Russia and our own FBI, for example) moved to put Trump in the White House -- and because everyone had come down on Trump for even suggesting that an American election could be rigged, no one could discount the results. ​
​How could all of this be true?  It sounds more like the bad plot to a highly questionable political thriller called “Unpresidented.”​

Pictured above right:  A tweet from Abrham Lincoln -- and it's on the internet with a quote and picture next to it, so it is authentic.

Pictured below left:  A poster for Nikita Mikhalkov's new highly questionable political thriller "Unpresidented," now playing in Moscow and select cities throughout Russia.

Pictured below right:  Check out the last synonym entry for "rig" at Thesaurus.com.
December 26:
Zika
Mosquitoes are SOOO annoying.  They tend to bite sexy people, and they just eat me alive! 
 
This was a particularly bad year for people who are prone to mosquito bites, though, because day-time active Aedes mosquitoes carried the Zika virus – a particular danger to pregnant women because the virus could bring on severe brain malformations and other birth defects in their babies. 
OF NOTE:  This is not the first time a virus has made our list.  "Ebola" was on our list of Words of the Year in 2014. 
December 25:
​Brexit
The first sign of real trouble in 2016 caused by English-speaking white people was the favorable vote for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union known as Brexit, a portmanteau of “British exit."   “Brexit” is also the odds-on-favorite to be the name of Bristol Palin’s next child.

Pictured above:  Bristol Palin with her husband Dakota Meyer.  The two were engaged, and a wedding date was set -- but then it was all called off.  A few months later Bristol gave birth to a child fathered by Meyer.  She named the child Sailors' Delight (or somehting like that.)  Then both Bristol & Dakota signed custody papers.  Later the two became engaged again.  Then Bristol announced she was pregnant again by Meyer, so the two decided to get married sooner than later. Brexit is the odds-on-favorite name for the child. They have yet to announce when they will get divorced and/or if they plan to have a third child. 
December 24:
Water
Water was all over the news this year -- water, water, everywhere -- and in some cases, not a drop to drink!  Water made our list of “Words of the Year” for three main reasons:

​First, the warm water in the ocean is melting glaciers at a record pace, so water levels around the world are rising.  It won’t be long until we all say “So long, Miami!” 


​Second, the Dakota Access pipeline controversy with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe slowly dripped into the national news coverage.  The tribe viewed the pipeline as a threat to the region's clean water and to ancient burial grounds.  How did law enforcement respond?  They sprayed the peaceful protestors with freezing cold water (and tear gas and rubber bullets).


​Finally, drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was found to be contaminated with high levels of lead soon after the state decided to save money by switching the city’s water supply from Lake Huron (which they were paying the city of Detroit for) to the Flint River (known by the locals for its filth).  
December 23:
Augmented Reality
First there was reality. Then came Virtual Reality.  As of July 2016 and the release of Pokemon Go, we now have Augmented Reality. In the game, players use a mobile device's GPS capability to locate, capture, battle, and train virtual creatures who appear on the screen as if they were in the same real-world location as the player. 

We wrote about Pokemon Go back in July, HERE. 
The Pokemon Go app quickly became a cultural phenomenon.  People had their eyes glued to their cell phone screens as they scoped out neighborhoods, schools, parks, malls, museums and more for the Pokemon creatures.  Some locales just weren't appropriate as "PokeStops" though -- for example, the Holocaust Museum -- so they had to ask patrons to resist the urge to augment their reality.  Information is HERE. 
HONORABLE MENTIONS: 

Encription: The most effective way to achieve data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it.  After a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, CA, the FBI-Apple encryption dispute brought to light concerns as to whether and to what extent courts in the US could compel manufacturers to assist in unlocking cellphone data.

Creepy Clown Sightings: Incidents of people dressed as creepyand/or evil clowns reported in the US (and subsequently in other countries) from August 2016.  [Note: Experts suggested that the pattern of creepy clown sightings matched the exact cities where Donald Trump held campaign rallies.]   We wrote about creepy clown sightings in October, HERE.  
December 22:
**bleep**
The GOP promised that the "p" word was coming (see the entry below for December 21).  They assured us that the "p" word was coming.  They suggested it.  They hinted at it.  They hoped for it.  They insisted that the "p" word was coming!

The "p" word finally did come via an out-take from a taping for an "Access Hollywood" segment, and what a doozey it was!  Not only did Trump utter the word, but the context in which it was said was thoroughly disgusting and deplorable.  And completely creepy (if not criminal).

The "p" word wasn't the only foul word uttered by candidate Trump.  No, we heard a complete litany of curse words including the "b" word and the "f" word.  It literally came to the point where news agencies had to post parental advisories prior to broadcasting the news.

So after all of this, we have a "p" word that sums up our thoughts:  PATHETIC!  

​HONORABLE MENTIONS: 
​Locker Room Talk: A desperate cover-up for disgusting, deplorable talk on the part of political candidates.

T-penetrating-the-P Trump/Pence Logo: It was abandoned within 24 hours because it brought on too much locker room talk.
December 21:
Pivot
The GOP kept promising he'd pivot.  

After he called Mexicans "rapists," they said he'd pivot. After he mocked a disabled reporter, they assured us he'd pivot.  After he promised to ban all Muslims, they said he'd pivot.  After he attacked a Gold Star family, they promised he'd pivot.  After he insulted women beyond belief, they hoped he'd pivot.  They prayed he'd pivot. 
Now he's the president-elect, and he has a white supremacist as a strategist, an anti-gay racist as AG, an Islamophobe for Nat Security, Exxon Mobil at State, Goldman Sachs at Treasury, a fast-food anti-labor nut-job at Labor, the "King of Bankruptcy" at Commerce, a public education foe at Education, a climate change denier at EPA, and Mitch McConnell's wife at Transportation.

We're still waiting for the pivot.  
December 20:
Self-Driving
They're coming.  Self-driving cars.

​From all the cartoons I watched as a kid, we were promised flying cars by now, but flying cars are no where to be seen.  To be honest, the prospect of having flying cars any time soon is not very likley.  However, that is not the case with self-driving cars and trucks.  Progress is being made and made quickly.  Uber has been testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh and San Francisco.  Tesla is aiming to have a fully driverless car by 2018, and other auto companies have plans for self-driving cars by 2020. Some predict that progress will come fast for self-driving trucks (HERE).
Of course, the companies developing self-driving cars are working out how the auto-pilot features will work in the case of an accident.  For example, should the car attempt to protect pedestrians over those in the car, or should the car protect those in the car above and beyond the safety of others? 

Pictured above:  Google received a patent for "a kind of human flypaper that would sit beneath an eggshell-like protective layer on the car’s front....On impact, the sticky coating would glue the victim to the car so they didn’t fall under the wheels or into the roadway."  More information is HERE. 
December 19:
(Silence...as in "Moment of")
Emily Dickinson said, "Saying nothing sometimes says the most."  However, I doubt she had in mind a sustained silence in response to terrorist attacks and hate crimes.  A moment of silence for police officers shot down in Dallas.  A moment of silence for club patrons in Orlando.  Moments of silence for countless acts of terrorism around the world.  Silence -- that's about all we get from Congress and the NRA after each and every tragedy.  A moment of silence -- and then nothing more. 

​OF NOTE: This is not the first time silence has made our list of Words of the Year.  Silence made our list back in 2014. Click HERE, and scroll down to the entry for December 26.

​
December 18:
Face Swap
Face swapping was certainly the hottest craze to hit the internet in 2016 -- and it's still going strong!  All one needs is a Face Swap app and two willing (or even unsuspecting) faces!
We wrote about face swapping back in March; click HERE.


HONORABLE MENTION: 

Mannequin Challenge: Another internet craze this past year was the "Mannequin Challenge": everyone in a room stands in a frozen stance while one person walks through the crowd and video records the still-life "mannequins."  We wrote about the Mannequin Challenge just last month, HERE.

​
December 17:
Progressive
Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president in April 2015. Who knows, maybe if he had done so in October 2014 -- and the presidential campaign was two years instead of a mere year and a half -- Sanders would have secured the Democratic nomination. He definitely had the momentum as the campaign progressed, and the energy from his campaign was centered on the fact that he's a progressive -- so much so that Hillary Clinton had to start proving that she was more progressive than Bernie.

For months, the two argued over who was a moderate and who was a true progressive. The spat peaked when Clinton donned a wig and starred in an insurance commercial as a spokesperson for Progressive.
December 16:
Periscope
In a year filled with false facts, fake news, and fear mongering, it should come as no surprise that those in power also attempted to control the real news -- or in this case, conceal it -- as it actually happened: in June, the Democrats in the House of Representatives held an impromtu sit-in when the Republicans refused to allow a vote on a gun control measure.

From NPR: "Democrats intended their protest to be carried to the nation. The first media responder would normally be C-SPAN. But the cameras in the galleries above the House floor are actually controlled by staffers directed by the House, which is to say House Republicans, not C-SPAN....House Speaker Paul Ryan declared the House in recess. And that kicked the rules into effect: The cameras above went black. They could not capture the drama playing out below."

Turns out it's a little more challenging to control the news these days: the Democrats went live with their protest through Twitter's Periscope and Facebook Live! These days, with video streaming platforms like Periscope, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live, any individual can become a one-person news team with nothing more than a smartphone and free mobile app -- even if and when the powers-that-be try to control the news!
​

​HONORABLE MENTIONS: 

Two slogans/hashtags that stemmed from the sit-in:

No Fly, No Buy: A reference to the fact that suspected terrorists on the "No Fly" list can still purcahse weapons of mass destruction.  To this day, Republicans have blocked any change in this.

No Bill, No Break: Alas, there was no bill, but there did come a break.  Now we're all just waiting for the next tragedy.
December 15:
Cupping
In many ways, 2016 was the Year of the Cup.  Well, maybe in just three ways 2016 was the Year of the Cup:

First, in the Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps was covered in odd, dark circular bruises.  Turns out, they were the result of "cupping":  an ancient form of alternative medicine in which a therapist puts special cups on the your skin for a few minutes to create suction. People get it for many purposes, including to help with pain, inflammation, blood flow, relaxation and well-being, and as a type of deep-tissue massage.​


Second, when Donald Trump won the presidential election, his supporters started asking for their Starbucks drinks under Trump's name as a movement against the coffee giant.  From a CNN report:  

"After a viral video showing a Trump supporter yelling at a barista gained traction on Wednesday, other supporters have banded together to protest what they view as political and anti-white discrimination.The man in the video told the Miami Herald that he was racially discriminated against and that the barista wouldn't serve him because she knew he was a Trump supporter.

Third, the new holiday McCafé cup at McDonald's went viral on social media after someone took it from "nice" to "naughty" with just a few strokes of a pen. 

From NBC Channel 4 in New York:  "The original McDonald’s holiday cup depicts two white mittens coming together along with the slogan 'Warmest Greetings.'

However, someone clearly saw something else in the image and added a few squiggles to give it a cheeky NSFW makeover. Now the cup gives an entirely new meaning to “spreading holiday cheer."
December 14:
Unreliable Narrator
It's very strange how Donald Trump and his loyal clan claim to be tired of "political correctness," but when it comes to describing the emporer himself and his attire, everyone seems to tip-toe around the fact that he is completely without a stitch!

Our favorite description of the Donald was from The New York Times in May 2016 in an article entitled, "Television Networks Struggle to Provide Equal Airtime in the Era of Trump":

Some network officials concede that Mr. Trump can be an unreliable narrator of his own campaign, reversing himself on policies from one interview to the next.

An unreliable narrator? C'mon now, folks, let's call a duck and duck, a quack a quack, and a liar a liar! Let's not pussyfoot around here. Mr. Trump's pants have been on fire for so long and so often, that in the spring of this year, Ivanka Trump introduced Trump-brand fire retardant pants exclusively for her father!

The news networks could not "fact-check" fast enough (which was not a problem for Fox News; they issued a statement detailing that they were not in the business of fact-checking), and some of them began posting the truth in the feeds below the videos in their stories.

Pictured at the right and below: News organizations began countering the false claims of Donald Trump in real-time.
HONORABLE MENTION:

Fake News: Fabricated stories pushed out as "news." The hoaxes, propogranda, and disinformation then drives web-traffic inflamed by the attention on social media. If it's all repeated often enough, then voila -- it becomes the "truth" (for example, see "pizzagate" under our Honoroable Mentions for December 7th).
December 13:
Y'all-Qaeda
In early 2016, a small band of militiamen and ranchers occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a federal wildlife preserve in Oregon, as part of a protest on behalf of two local ranchers who were headed to jail. The group was ultimately acquitted of federal conspiracy and gun charges.

Yes, you read that correctly: a federal jury found Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants "not guilty" of conspiring to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs through intimidation, threat or force during the 41-day occupation of the refuge. I suspect they used the "well-regulated bird watching" defense. Hmmm...maybe "white privilege" should end up at the top of our list of the Words of the Year?

Well, at least we ended up with a good laugh due to some very clever puns, including "Y'all Qaeda," "Vanilla ISIS," "Yee Hawdists," "Yokel Haram," "Talibundy" and "Meal Team Six" — all plays on real-life jihadist terminology.
December 12:
New York Values
Throughout the presidential campaign, Ted Cruz (aka the Zodiac Killer) derided Donald Trump for his "New York Values."  Katie Zezima of the Washington Post noted, "Cruz repeated it again, and again, and again, characterizing 'New York values' as too socially liberal and focused on money. It was a way to knock Queens-born businessman Donald Trump in front of people who lived far from Manhattan."  The Post article is HERE. 

Pictured below:  The press reports on Cruz and New York values. 

HONORABLE MENTION:

Dog Whistle: From Urban Dictionary: "Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words. Example: Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level."

Hmmm...some say that Ted Cruz's rant on "New York values" was a dog whistle. Google it, and then you decide.

Also of note: New York rejected Trump in the election. Turns out that even they don't like his values! #justsaying
December 11:
Security Apparatus
Sad clown and presidential candidate Jeb Bush plays yet another role with more words on our list:  "Security apparatus."

During one of the too-many-to-count GOP debates, Bush tried to defend his brother's legacy, and he said, "While Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a national security apparatus to keep us safe." Of course, George Bush was a day late and much more than a dollar short in protecting us since he ignored all warning signs of an attack and his "security apparatus" wasn't in place on 9/11.  Way to keep us safe! 

Pictured at the right:  The Bush security apparatus.
Of course, others have claimed that that apparatus was firmly in place all along.  When warming up a mob for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani actually said, ""By the way, under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office." Say whaaaa? Shame on you, Rudy! Information is HERE.  
​
HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Blind Trust: In some cases, "blind trust" was discussed in 2016 in regards to a financial arrangement for Trump to avoid conflicts of interest with his businesses; however, more often than not, "blind trust" is what Trump and his GOP cronies want from the American public.

Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter movement is credited with popularizing this phrase as a rallying cry for individuals to stay aware and to keep abreast of social justice issues. Now that Trump demands "blind trust" of all Americans, the term is even more important!
December 10:
Please Clap
Emmett Lee Dickinson's Uncle Hobart was a world-renowned clown and mummer. Known around the globe as Gurgles the Clown, Hobart Dickinson was also the Hyman Heffernan Chidgey Professor of Contemporary Balloon Animology at the Barnum and Bailey Clown College, Washerst, PA, campus.

If it was one thing Hobart Dickinson knew, it was clown protocols, stage presence and timing (oh, there were three things he knew), and he hammered home the basics to his students. He knew that there was no sadder clown than a sad clown who begs his audience to "please clap." Hobart Dickinson's mantra was "Ask not for when the crowd claps. They clap for you."

Alas, sad clown and presidential candidate Jeb Bush did not know of Hobart Dickinson's clowning credo, and at a New Hampshire campaign event, he had to tell the audience when they were supposed to clap during his speech. As Donald Trump would say (and probably did say), sad!
December 9:
Yuuge (Yooge)
When it comes to size, a more bigly word than "bigly" in 2016 was "yuuge" (also spelled "yooge") -- and what made "yuuge" even yuuger was that we had it coming from both the left (Bernie Sanders) and the right (Donald Trump).  

Pictured at the right:  Trump and his yuuge double chin.
December 8:
Bigly
Thanks to the presidential campaign, 2016 was an interesting year for words.  Some might go so far as to say that logophiles won -- and they won superly.  Maybe even muchly.  Or perhaps bigly?

One of the more interestingly words from last year popped up in May when Donald Trump predicted that he was going to win, "and we're going to win bigly."  Some say that Trump said, "big league," not "bigly."  You decide, HERE.  

Of course, when Trump noted that he loved a woman's "nude dances" in lasers, he and supporters claimed that he really said "new advances."  Go figure.
 Above:  Not everything about Trump is bigly.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Unwound: When Trump & Megyn Kelly kissed & made up bigly after the first presidential debate, Trump said, "“When I’m wounded, I go after people hard. I try and unwound myself."

Braggadocious: Twitter lit up bigly when Trump responded to a debate question by using the word "braggadocious." He was trying for "braggadocio.” Info HERE.

2016 was also a bigly year for Trump-related terms:

Trumper-tantrum; Twitterer-in-chief; Trumpteruption; Trumpocolypse; Trumpster Fire
Unpresidented: A late entry into the mix of our Words of the Year just occurred on December 17:  "unpresidented."  President-elect Trump tweeted about an action taken by China, and he caled the move "unpresidented."  Within an hour of tweeting the message, the mispelling was detected, the tweet was deleted, and the same message was re-tweeted with the correct spelling; however, it was too late -- the world had "heard your cry for help."

"Unpresidented" certainly gives future biographers and movie-makers a terrific title for any book or documentary about Trump!  

Also, who knows -- maybe "unpresidented" will top our Words of the Year list in 2017!
December 7:
Squirmishes
Every now and then in 2016, Sarah Palin would pop her pretty little head into the campaign spotlight, and she never disappointed! Our favorite disjointed rambling of Palin's was her "meandering, fiery, sarcastic, patriotic and blustery speech endorsing Donald Trump for president Tuesday in Ames, Iowa."  In that bewildering proclamation, she spoke of centuries' old "squirmishes" in the Middle East -- an odd blend of "squirm" and "skirmish."

Palin once touted herself as a modern-day Shakespeare due to the inventive nature of the words she coins (we're not making this up) -- although her work is always accidental, never deliberate. Some of our past favorites:  "refudiate," "misunderestimate," and (when speaking of feminists) a "cackle of rads."  You betcha!
HONORABLE MENTIONS: 

Poorly Educated: Tump love's 'em -- the poorly educated -- and they love him.  They're provoked by his bluster, they're fooled by his false claims, and they're conned by his hollow promises.  They're hoodwinked by fake news (like "pizzagate"), they're deceived by revisionist historians, and they're duped by ludicrous conspiracy theories.   Just the right mix to put an unqualified charalatan in the White House.


​Pizzagate: Think of the most ludicrous conspiracy theory you can think of, throw in some preposterous code words like "hot dog," "pizza," "sauce" and "pasta," set it in a DC pizzaria called "Comet Ping Pong," and push it out to the poorly educated, and voila -- pizzagate!
December 6:
Pandermonium
The definition of “pandemonium” in the Cambridge Dictionary is “a situation in which there is a lot of noise and confusion because people are excited, angry or frightened.” Now add in an outbreak of social-media-gone-viral with noise and excitement over a politician’s pandering, and you’ve got “pandermonium.” 
 
“Pandermonium” is not a new word (and often it’s been spelled with a hyphen, “pander-monium”).  It’s been around for a few years now.  However, we believe that the Chinese calendar was correct in listing 2016 as the Year of the Pander (with 2017 surely to be the Year of the Bull). 
 
Yes, politicians did not hold back with their pandering, and pandermonium seemed to occur endlessly throughout the year – and Donald Trump reigned supreme, almost to a point of creating pandermonium through a new phenomenon we’re dubbing “P.T.Barnumonium” –  when suckers take in his ballyhoo like industrial air ducts! 
 
Still, Trump was out-Trumped by Carly Fiorina with one stupendous bit of pandermonium early in the year.  Here are five of our favorite break-outs of pandermonium in 2016:

​#5:  Trump praised Idaho for their potatoes ("nobody grows them better") -- although I seem to remember that he said he'd buy his farm in Iowa (becasue nobody has better farms).


​
​#4: “Nobody reads the bible more than me," proclaimed Trump when he announced that only the Bible was better than The Art of the Deal.    "I love the Bible!" -- but a la Sarah Palin naming her favorite newspapers, he couldn't name a single favorite verse.


​#3: Even Christians went wild when Trump said at Liberty University,  “Two Corinthians, 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame…is that the one you like?”  The crowd laughed and corrected him, pointing out that it’s “Second Corinthians,” not “Two Corinthians”

​
#2:  The taco bowl. Need we say more?
#1.  Just before the Iowa caucuses, Carly Fiorina threw her alma mater under the campaign bus and said she was "rooting for a Hawkeyes win today" in the Rose Bowl.
December 5:
Steele Johnson
Our past countdowns have all included "names of the year" -- Carlos Danger and Francis in 2013,  Adele Dazeem in 2014, and Dick Poop in 2015  (along with a few other names as "Honorable Mentions") -- and this year the honor for "Name of the Year" goes to STEELE JOHNSON  (pictured at the right), an Olympic diver from Indiana.

Steele's parents, Woodrow "Woody" Johnson and Anita Johnson (nee Woodcock), said that they both had endured years of teasing due to their names, so they were determined to give their sons bully-proof names, free from insinuation -- and so they named their sons after metals, Steele, Silver, Iron and Lead. 
HONORABLE MENTIONS:  Pictured below left to right:  

1. BERNIE SANDWICH, a caterer who works exclusively for the "All In with Chris Hayes" show on MSNBC;  
2. DRITTEREICH DRÜMPF, a relative of Donald Trump with the family's original name;
3. BUBBA THE LOVE SPONGE CLEM, a radio personality who figured in a court case this past year for having filmed his then-wife Heather Clem and Hulk Hoan having sex in his bedroom (we're not making this stuff up.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Pictured below left to right:

4. JOHN MILLER, Donald Trump's elusive and reclusive publicist (to the left of Donald Trump in the photo). We wrote about Mr. Miller earlier this year (HERE);
5. MR. SPAGHETTI, a dog named in a contest on Twitter -- but the Boston Police Department refused to accept the outcome, and they reported that the name "Hunter" had won (information HERE);
6. SCARY LUCY, a statue of Lucille Ball in Celoron, NY, that was finally replaced this year with a more accurate likeness.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Pictured below left to right: 

7. HARAMBE, A zoo worker shot and killed Harambe after a three-year-old slipped into his cage at a zoo in Cincinnati. Following the killing, Harambe became subject of multiple viral memes. 
8. CHEWBACCA MOM, 37-year-old Texas mother, Candace Payne, who gained her fifteen-minutes of fame after filming herself heartily laughing while wearing a Star Wars Chewbacca mask;
9. KEN BONE, "If the Internet was desperate for a new meme, Ken Bone delivered."  The unassuming, undecided voter was caught on camera with his fogyish red-sweater, and our new meme-king was crowned!  Later it was discovered that under an Internet alias, Mr. Bone was quite an unsavory character, so his crown tarnished quickly.
December 4:
(love, haha, wow, sad, & angry)
Written language started with hieroglyphics, and from the way things are going, it seems like it will end with emojis.  

Emojis originated in the 1990s on Japanese mobile phones, and later they were included on iPhones and Adnroids.  Last year the Oxford English Dictionary selected the "tears of joy" emoji as its "Word of the Year." In 2016, there were still more advances with emjois.  There was an “Emojicon” in San Francisco (information is HERE).  Plus, Facebook added emoji reactions for “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry” in addition to their “thumbs up” for “like.”
​
​OF NOTE:  This not the first time a pictogram has made our list of "Words of the Year."  Just last year, the new Twitter "heart" that replaced the Twitter "star" made our list.  Check HERE -- scroll down to the entry for December 1st.
​
Picture
HONORABLE MENTION:   As mentioned above, the "tears of joy" emoji was the OED "word of the year" last year. This year, the "smiling poop" is our "turd of the year."  A perfect emoji to use, for example, when describing Donald Trump by saying, "You can't polish this turd" (HERE). 
December 3:
internet
Did you know that a “major grammatical battle” was being waged in 2016?

Hmmm, perhaps you think we’re referring to the ongoing clash between the militant grammarians who support the Oxford comma and the rebel forces who do not.

No, the conflict this past year dealt with the capitalization of the word “Internet,” and in April, the AP announced that “we will lowercase internet effective June 1, when the 2016 Stylebook launches" (pictured at the right).

According to logophile Mignon Fogarty, Twitter’s adorable @GrammarGirl, “past bombshells” related to changes in the AP Stylebook “include allowing email without a hyphen" -- so we are certain that the announcement about lowercasing Internet was no less shocking to grammarians around the world! Her report from the battlefield is HERE.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:

tl/dr: “too long/didn’t read” -- a terse reply used when someone sends or posts a lengthy, mind-numbing message that you just don’t have the time, interest, or energy to deal with.
​Delete Your Account: a sarcastic rejoinder used when someone tweets something so foolish, moronic, and pointless that the person who wrote it should just close their account and walk away in shame. “Delete your account” reached its zenith in practice when Hillary Clinton tweeted it to Donald Trump on June 9, 2016.
 December 2:
 Lepo
"Lepo" is the second word to make our 31-day countdown of 2016's "Words of the Year."  What's a "lepo" you ask?  "Lepo" was the most-searched term at Merriam-Webster-dot-com during the October 9th Persidential Debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:  "If you were confused during the debate tonight by questions and answers about Aleppo, the Syrian city that’s become a focal point of the country’s raging conflict, you’re not alone! So were the many people frantically searching on Merriam-Webster’s website. According to Merriam-Webster, 'lepo-' — that’s as in 'what’s a lepo?' — topped the list of search terms queried over the course of the 90-minute trudge."   For more, click HERE.




​Right:  Merriam-Webster tweets their top search during the presidential debate:  "lepo."

Below left and right:  The front and back of a Trump family photo where Donald Trump Jr. captioned the back of picture with "Eric bagged a lepo!"  The two are atempting to set the world record for killing the most endangered speicies. 

​OF NOTE: You can check out which words are trending at Merriam-Webster by clicking HERE.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Whilst: I'm not sure why, but something happened whilst people were tweeting on May 28, 2016 -- all of a sudden, the word "whilst" took off on Twitter. It appeared in hundreds if not thousands of tweets -- not as a hashtag; instead, people were just using the word -- and it all seemed to come and go in a day. Did it make Twitter a little more civilized? Or was this just some bizarre abnormality? You decide. (Click the images below to enlarge.)
 December 1:
(((  )))
The first word on our list of 2016’s “Words of the Year” isn’t a word at all.  It’s a punctuation mark --  a series of three parentheses to be exact -- and they’re not used to mark off any sort of parenthetical word or phrase.  Instead, for the past several years, they have been used by the Alt-Right (i.e., Neo-Nazis)  to indicate Jews on the internet.

After the story on this broke, though, tweeters on Twitter began using the symbol as a way “for the rest of us to tell the web's worst haters: We know what you're doing. Now the joke's on you.”  Information via a Daily News article is HERE.
OF NOTE:  This is not the first time a punctuation mark has made our annual list of “Words of the Year.” In 2013, the period made our list – information is HERE (see the entry for December 1st).
OTHER WORDS OF THE YEAR FOR 2016:
Picture

    Nominate a word for a 2016 "Word(s) of the Year" honor:
Words of the Year 2013:  Click HERE.

Words of the Year 2014:  Click HERE.

Words of the Year 2015:  Click HERE.