Alchemy

When:

Lookups spiked on January 12, 2015.

Why:

As George Clooney accepted the Cecil B. DeMille achievement award at this year's Golden Globes, he thanked his wife, Amal Alamuddin: "It's a humbling thing when you find someone to love. Amal, whatever alchemy brought us together, I couldn't be more proud to be your husband."

Alchemy means "a power or process of transforming something common into something special," and originally meant "a science that was used in the Middle Ages with the goal of changing ordinary metals into gold." Alchemy came to English from Medieval Latin, the language used by learned people in the Middle Ages - including alchemists, even though their "science" is not taken very seriously today.