Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year Is ... Science

So, this is kind of weird: Merriam-Webster's word of the year is ... "science." And no, the publisher is not trying to make some sort of point by not choosing a word like, say, "selfie." Rather, it just looked at which words people looked up on its website, and it found there was a 176% increase in the number of times people decided to look up the definition of "science" compared to last year. Thus, "science" gets the title, the AP reports.

"The more we thought about it, the righter it seemed in that it does lurk behind a lot of big stories that we as a society are grappling with, whether it's climate change or environmental regulation, or what's in our textbooks," explains the company president. What could have been: Rounding out the Top 5 are cognitive, rapport, communication, and niche. (More Merriam-Webster stories.)