The presidential debate on Tuesday boosted the popularity of an obscure word as TV viewers scrambled to find out its meaning. Merriam-Webster Dictionary reports that the most “looked up” word at their very busy online site on Tuesday night was “logorrhea.”
Interest in the word spiked by 56,000% the dictionary said, and it occurred during the first debate between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“Logorrhea jumped to the top of our lookups after MSNBC host Rachel Maddow used the word to describe the presidential debates,” the dictionary noted in a statement.
“We define logorrhea as excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness. Logorrhea was created in English in the late 1800s from the Greek words logos, meaning word, reason, speech and -rrhea, from the verb that means to flow,” Merriam Webster explained.
“It was probably modeled on the much more familiar word diarrhea, which comes from Greek words combining to mean to flow through,” the dictionary noted, though it did not provide the exact number of lookups that occurred on Tuesday night.
Merriam Webster also said that “shush,” “moderator” and “gaffe” were also popular lookups during and after the debate.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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