The Words of the Week - Dec. 26
Dictionary lookups from the holidays, the media, and the Internet
‘Backlash’
Backlash had a spike in lookups, driven in part by a news organization’s last-minute decision to shelve a story.
New CBS News chief draws backlash by pulling '60 Minutes' story on El Salvador prison
—(headline) PBS, 22 Dec. 2025
Backlash, in modern use, is “a strong adverse reaction (as to a recent political or social development).” The word came into use at the beginning of the 19th century, and initially was mainly used in technical settings, with meanings such as “a sudden violent backward movement or reaction” and “the play between adjacent movable parts (as in a series of gears).”
These circumstances, or rather established facts, even cursorily viewed, will evince, that complex, extensive, and cumbrous accelerating wheel machinery, with its indispensable concomitants of massy framed work, and the certainty of back-lash, at least in the commencement of motion, may readily, conveniently, and usefully be dispensed with, and the engine this rendered indefinitely more simple, valuable and useful.
—
‘Xmas’
Xmas also saw an increased number of lookups last week, as Christmas approached.
Fans rediscover 1983 clip of national treasure Cilla Black singing at Xmas & viewers love one groovy lad in particular
— (headline) The Sun (London, Eng.), 23 Dec. 2025
The word Xmas is simply defined as “Christmas,” although we note that it is now used chiefly for brevity in advertisements, headlines, and similar settings. This shorter word is occasionally thought of as an attempt to secularize Christmas, as it appears to remove the word Christ. However, in this case X functions as a symbol for Christ, from the Greek letter chi.
‘Terabyte’ & ‘Scrape’
Terabyte and scrape were also in the news last week, after a large amount of data was copied from a music streaming site.
Pirate Activists Announce They Scraped Spotify in Massive 300 Terabyte Archive
—
The sense of scrape used here is a new one, which may be defined as “to extract and copy data from a web site.” This sense has been in use since the 1990s, initially as screen-scrape:
Before that, CNN had to screen-scrape its Web site for news stories, deconstruct them from HTML, then send them out. Now, a Corba application goes out on the network, finds any new content, and automatically notifies users, says Al Issa, a software-development architect with CNN Interactive.
—
A terabyte is “1024 gigabytes or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes” (although it is also used simply to mean one trillion bytes). A byte is “a unit of computer information or data-storage capacity that consists of a group of eight bits and that is used especially to represent an alphanumeric character.” Tera- is a combining form that is used in English to mean “trillion,” and comes from the Greek téras, meaning "sign sent by the gods, portent, marvel, monster.”
‘Kwanzaa’
Lookups for Kwanzaa, were higher than usual this week, as they always are at this time of year.
Kwanzaa celebration offers ‘a reason for people to love living in Beaverton’
—
In 1966, Maulana Karenga, a Black Studies professor at California State University at Long Beach, created a new holiday patterned after traditional African harvest festivals. He called it Kwanzaa, a name he took from a Swahili term that means “first fruits.” The holiday, which takes place from December 26th to January 1st, was originally intended as a nonreligious celebration of family and social values. Each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Abligurition’
It’s a season of holidays for many people, and so it might be apt to know vocabulary such as abligurition, an archaic word defined in 1724 by Nathan Bailey as “a prodigal spending in Belly-Cheer.” A more modern definition might be “extravagance in buying foods that make your tummy happy,” although we wouldn’t be unhappy if some of you tried to bring belly-cheer back into use.
