The impeachment of President Trump has an unexpected by-product. The process is sparking public interest in unusual words which have surfaced as lawmakers face off on Capitol Hill. In an official ’trend watch,’ the official website for the Merriam-Webster dictionary reveals that the number of people looking up the word “perfidy” recently spiked by 25,200%.
“Why are people looking up perfidy? Perfidy snuck its way to the top of the lookup chart on January 31, 2020, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used it to describe Senate Republicans’ vote to block witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial,” the dictionary said in an analysis.
“Perfidy is a noun meaning ’the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal; ’treachery’ or ’an act or an instance of disloyalty.’ The word derives from the Latin perfidus, meaning ’faithless,’ which is itself made of per- (’detrimental to’) and fides (’faith’),” Merriam-Webster explained.
It also points out that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently warned both sides in the impeachment battle to stop “pettifogging.” The lookups on that word spiked by 30,800% on Jan. 22, the day Mr. Roberts used it.
And the definition?
“The noun pettifogger has two main senses as ’a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable; shyster’ and ’one given to quibbling over trifles. ’To pettifog is ’to engage in legal chicanery’ or ’to quibble over insignificant details’,” the analysis said.
Other impeachment-related words that have intrigued the public include “temerity,” “dilatory,”and “braggadoccio,” which emerged during the hearings and remain on the dictionary’s top-10 list of trending words.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.