Trend Watch

Reports: Clinton Campaign, DNC Funded 'Dossier'

'Dossier' has seen a 7600% increase in lookups

Dossier was among our top lookups (an increase of approximately 7600% more than its average rate) on October 25th, 2017, following reports in a number of news sources on the connections between Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the compiler of a dossier on Donald Trump.

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
— Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett, and Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, 24 Oct. 2017

Dossier (“a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject”) comes to English directly from the French, in which language it referred to a compendium of files, arranged in folders, each one with its name written on the spine, or back. The French word comes in part from dos, meaning “back.” The word has been in use in English since the middle of the 19th century.

On the first and second stories of a vast stone building in Paris, called the ‘Military Depot,’ are to be found individual dossiers.
Chambers’s Journal (London, UK), 6 Aug. 1864


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