In the USA, the main word of 2018 was chosen.

Searches for the word justice on Merriam-Webster's website are up 74% year-over-year, which is why the word "justice" has been chosen as the top word of the year in the United States by the American reference and vocabulary company. dictionaries.

Фото: Depositphotos

Racial justice. Obstacle to justice. Social justice. Ministry of Justice. Merriam-Webster chose the word justice as the main word of the year in 2018, writes Kare 11. The word follows toxic, as selected by Oxford Dictionaries, and misinformation, as selected by Dictonary.com.

Peter Sokolowski, editor-in-chief of Merriam-Webster, told the Associated Press on Monday that “justice” constantly hit the top 20 or 30 searches on the company's website, occasionally appearing at the top after certain events, but constantly remaining somewhere close to top-tier for most of the year.

While this is one of those common words that people may search to check for correct spelling and usage in a sentence, Sokolowski pointed to other reasons that drive search traffic. Among them is an attempt to focus the train of thought around a philosophical problem or the search for inspiring motivation. Such well-known words often become popular every year, including quite abstract ones, including the word “love”.

The word justice once again took off in searches shortly after President Trump's former aide Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes that included paying secret compensation to cover up his boss's alleged intimate relationships.

The word also came to mind for Americans following the Senate vote on the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill with broad bipartisan support. That same year, Kim Kardashian West visited Trump twice at the White House to discuss prison and sentencing reform. Convictions for drug crimes, treatment for opioid addiction, loosening cannabis laws, the Tesla investigation, Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign: justice will remain a major issue in the new year.

Photo: depositphotos.com

And last but not least the attention to the words is concentrated on Twitter.

When Trump writes about the Department of Justice, he simply uses the word 'Justice'. On August 1, when the president tweeted to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions about his desire to end the Mueller investigation, Internet searches for the word picked up a noticeable pace. Trump cited "obstruction of justice," a separate entry on Merriam-Webster's website, causing a 900% increase in searches compared to the same date a year earlier.

Sokolowski said searches for justice grew 74% year-over-year on the site, which receives more than 100 million page views a month and contains nearly half a million entries. To be worthy of mention of the year, an entry must show both high volume of traffic and significant year-over-year growth in searches—as opposed to, say, a word that was simply buzzword.

“We don't edit anything. We looked at the data and were surprised by which word was the most important,” Sokolowski said. “That’s what people have been thinking about all year.”

The word justice comes from Latin, unlike many of the more emotional words that originated in Old English: from there went the words law (law), fair (fair) and right (right), but with respect to the system of laws never used the word justice.

“It is no coincidence that this has been going on since the 12th century, immediately following the Norman Conquest. When the Normans invaded England, they brought their language, Old French, which was then basically the modern version of Latin. They brought their system of government and laws to the people they defeated, and so all legal language in English today is Latin, just like the word justice,” Sokolowski explained. “It took the introduction of a system of laws to give us the word justice.”

Other words included in the list of the most sought after in the search this year: maverick / rebel (Senator John McCain died); respect / respect (died Aretha Franklin); Excelsior (now Lee Stan’s trademark war cry); pissant (a radio host described Tom Brady’s daughter as); laurel (remember Laurel versus Yanni?); feckless (the way Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump in combination with a curse word), epiphany (the name of the song BTS K-pop, which came out this year) and nationalism / nationalism (at the October 22 rally in Texas, Trump declared himself nationalist).

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