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'Socialism' the Most Looked-Up Word of 2015 on Merriam-Webster

posted by cmn32480 on Friday December 18 2015, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-do-you-spell-that dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Guardian reports that "socialism" was the most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster's site this year, a change the American dictionary publisher attributes to US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who has positioned of himself as a "democratic socialist".

As a socialist (or communist) myself, I personally think it's great that especially people from the United States try to figure out the meaning of the word beyond McCarthyism. I'm glad that people show interest in politics and finding out about positions of candidates.

Past years winners are available on Wikipedia.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Friday December 18 2015, @01:24PM

    by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday December 18 2015, @01:24PM (#278169)

    Well the dictionary definition is actually completely different than the one socialists use themselves, and both are completely different than the one Bernie uses, so I am not sure that any amount of dictionary reading is going to help people understand.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @07:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @07:17PM (#278310)

    Ahh, so just like feminism then. Genuinely, I am not trolling or otherwise trying to stir up trouble. Feminism, like socialism, has become a philosophy that means such radically different things to different people that the meaning has become lost in contrary action.

    • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Saturday December 19 2015, @05:58AM

      by patella.whack (3848) on Saturday December 19 2015, @05:58AM (#278494)

      While I agree somewhat with your sentiment about the term 'feminism', There's an important distinction here. I think the point of this data regarding the term 'socialism' is to show that the term is in flux, at least in the US, a country where there seems to be an interest in the populace to reexamine the term in context of internal structures that may be relevant. IOW it's possibly no longer a simple scare word which elicits a purely emotional reaction but rather it's open to investigation as to it's meaning, especially with the modifier: 'democtratic.' that Sanders has been using. ie. 'democratic socialism'