Visitors to Merriam-Webster Online in 2009 were intrigued by the language associated with national and international issues of all sorts: economical, medical, personal and political. Words like furlough, pandemic, philanderer and rogue dominated the headlines and subsequent lookups at the site. After Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during a speech made by President Obama, "admonish"—defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition as "to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner"—received the highest intensity of lookups over the shortest period of time, ensuring its place as Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2009. Check out the rest of the Top Ten here.
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