Free Republic

“Gaslighting” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year. The gaslighting was pervasive. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at...

corybantic [kawr-uh-ban-tik, kor-] Word Origin adjective 1. frenzied; agitated; unrestrained. 2. (initial capital letter). Also, Corybantian [kawr-uh-ban-shuh n, kor-] (Show IPA), Corybantine [kawr-uh-ban-tin, -tahyn, kor-] (Show IPA). of or relating to a Corybant. Origin of corybantic: 1635-1645 First recorded in 1635-45; Corybant + -ic Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day........

Two hundred fifty years ago, on April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and written almost wholly by himself. It appeared in London in two folio volumes. Like most dictionaries, there is a rigorous serenity in the look of its pages. The language has been laid out in alphabetical order. The etymologies and definitions bristle with italics and abbreviations. The quotations that exemplify the meanings of the words present a bottomless fund of good sense and literary beauty. But I wonder whether anyone has ever had a more dynamic...