Conspiracy jumped past thousands of other words on October 30th, 2017, after it was featured prominently in FBI indictments filed for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager. The word was looked up approximately 1500% more than its average rate.
President Trump's former 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, Manafort's former business associate, have been indicted by a federal grand jury in the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, according to unsealed documents released Monday.
The 31-page indictment contains 12 counts including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the U.S., unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading statements surrounding the Foreign Agents Registration Act , false statements and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
— CBS News (cbs.com), 30 Oct. 2017
Conspiracy (and conspire) may be traced in part to the Latin word spirare, meaning “to breathe.” The word has been in use in English for a considerable length of time (since the 14th century). It may often be found in legal use, in which case it may have a specific meaning that is more precise than when found in generalized use (“the act of conspiring together”).
Our Law Dictionary, for instance, distinguishes between civil conspiracy (“a conspiracy that is not prosecuted as a crime but that forms the grounds for a lawsuit”) and criminal conspiracy (“a conspiracy prosecuted as a crime”). Related to these senses of conspiracy is the conspiracy theorist, a term that has been in use since the first half of the 20th century.
If there has been any secret, backstairs work, the conspiracy theorists will surely find receptive audience for its exposure.
— The Baltimore Sun, 5 Apr. 1934
