Trending: ‘complicit’

Lookups spiked 3,025% on December 4th, 2018

Why are people looking up complicit?

Complicit was among our top lookups on December 4th, 2018, after Senator Lindsey Graham asserted that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was "complicit in the murder" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Sen. Lindsey Graham says Saudi Arabia's crown prince is a "wrecking ball" and is "complicit in the murder" of Khashoggi to the "highest level possible."

"Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally and the relationship is worth saving, but not at all costs," he adds https://t.co/iZZbpgzx7c pic.twitter.com/tEJ6ja8Mup
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 4, 2018

What does complicit mean?

Complicit is defined as "helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way."

Where does complicit come from?

Complicit is a back-formation, a shortening of complicity. It is related to a number of other words which share its root of plicare (Latin for "to fold"), such as accomplice, explicit, and plication ("the act or process of folding; the state of being folded").

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.