Every December, Merriam-Webster announces their "word of the year" and this year, it's "justice," presumably because there wasn't enough of it.
Although the word was only searched 75 percent more than last year, "the concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year." Although this is true about 2018 this is also a statement that could be made about any year (2017's word was "feminism," which was searched last year in relation to a specific kind of #metoo justice). Merriam-Webster's statement about the word singles out the Mueller investigations (Department of Justice) and Kavanaugh hearings (justice as in a judge) as two of the main reasons people searched the word
The meaning of the word is not singular, says the statement: "justice has varied meanings that do a lot of work in the language—meanings that range from the technical and legal to the lofty and philosophical. For many reasons and for many meanings, one thing’s for sure: justice has been on the minds of many people in 2018."
The year's top ten searched words were all searched way more than the word of the year:
- Nationalism
- Pansexual
- Lodestar
- Epiphany
- Feckless
- Laurel
- Pissant
- Respect
- Maverick
- Excelsior