Merriam-Webster Announces Top Ten Favorite Words

Posted on May 21, 2004

Judging from the responses to a recent "What's Your Favorite Word?" survey conducted on Merriam-Webster OnLine, folks are throwing their troubles out the window right and left-or at least enjoying throwing around the word that means exactly that. Heading the list of Merriam-Webster's Top Ten Favorite Words revealed is "defenestration," a noun derived from the Latin word fenestra (window), and defined by Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary as: "a throwing of a person or thing out of a window."

From the thousands of anonymous entries submitted by the site's visitors throughout the month of April, "defenestration" received the most votes by a wide margin, distinguishing itself-among other popular words the likes of "discombobulate," "plethora," and "kerfuffle," as the clear Favorite of all Favorites.

We agree that you can have a lot of fun with a plethora of onomatopoeia words.

2004 Top Ten Favorite Words

defenestration
serendipity
onomatopoeia
discombobulate
plethora
callipygian
juxtapose
persnickety
kerfuffle
flibbertigibbet

Merriam-Webster President and Publisher John M. Morse says of the list, "Projects like this remind us once again of the deep level of interest that people attach to the words in their language. Using language can be a little like serving up a meal, with words as the ingredients. I think people were sharing with us their favorite ingredients -- the ingredients that add spice and flavor and a personal touch to their everyday use of language. The words that people offered were really striking. The common denominator running through many of them was a kind of texture -- an unusual story behind the word, or an interesting sequence of sounds. In fact, many of these words were little poems in themselves. People are clearly drawn to words that have this kind of richness and texture, and fortunately our language is well stocked with them."

Merriam-Webster OnLine claims its traffic now exceeds 100 million individual page views per month. On average, the company responds to approximately ten lookup requests in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary or Thesaurus per second. During peak hours, this may increase to more than 100 requests per second.