The Words of the Week - July 25
Dictionary lookups from politics, professional wrestling, and music
‘Seditious’
Lookups for both the adjective seditious and the noun sedition were high this week following accusations made by President Trump.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that some Democrats should face “severe consequences” as he pointed to his baseless claim that the 2020 election was “rigged.” … Trump claimed that Obama had been “caught directly.” “This is like proof. Irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious. That Obama was trying to lead a coup, and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people. But Obama headed it up,” Trump said, without citing evidence.
—Rachel Cohen, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), 22 July 2025
We define sedition as “incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority” and seditious as “disposed to arouse or take part in or guilty of sedition” or “of, relating to, or tending toward sedition.”
‘Sabbath’
Sabbath was trending this week in connection with the death of Ozzy Osbourne, founding member and lead singer of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.
Ozzy Osbourne, a founding father of British heavy metal, a latter-day solo star and a new-millennium reality TV luminary, died Tuesday after a yearslong struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 76.
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We define Sabbath as “the seventh day of the week observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening as a day of rest and worship by Jews and some Christians” and “Sunday observed among Christians as a day of rest and worship.” Sabbath is also used to mean “a time of rest.” The word Sabbath came to English (via Anglo-French, Latin, and Greek) from the Hebrew shabbāth, literally, “rest.”
‘Heel’
Heel, among other wrestling-related words, saw higher lookups this week following the death of professional wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan.
Hogan rose to prominence in the 1980s with his “Hulkamania” persona and helped transform WWE, then known as the WWF, into a national powerhouse, becoming the company’s top champion on six separate occasions. Hogan reinvented himself into a dastardly heel in WCW during the late-1990s, as his “Hollywood Hulk Hogan” persona helped transform the business as part of the NWO (New World Order).
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We define the professional wrestling sense of heel as “a wrestler who performs the role of the unsympathetic antagonist or adversary in a staged wrestling match.” The term is contrasted with baby face, which refers to a wrestler who performs the role of the sympathetic protagonist.
‘Recess’
Lookups for recess saw a bump this week as the U.S. House of Representatives began its summer recess earlier than usual.
On Wednesday, the House began its five-week recess earlier than anticipated, after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) opted Tuesday to suspend additional floor votes until September in an effort to quash a bipartisan push to force a floor vote on releasing the [Epstein] files.
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We define the relevant sense of recess as “a suspension of business or procedure often for rest or relaxation.” The word traces back to the Latin verb recedere, meaning “to recede.”
‘Flügelhorn’
Flügelhorn (sometimes styled fluegelhorn) was also trending this week, following the death of jazz musician Chuck Mangione.
Chuck Mangione, whose limpid fluegelhorn ruled the upper reaches of Billboard’s adult contemporary charts in the 1970s and ’80s with a culture-permeating lilt that helped create the genre known as “smooth jazz,” died on Tuesday at his home in Rochester, N.Y. He was 84.
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A flügelhorn is a valved brass instrument resembling a cornet but having a larger bore. The word comes from German, from Flügel, meaning “wing, flank” plus Horn, meaning “horn,” so-called from its use to signal the flanking drivers in a battue.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Jentacular”
Jentacular may look fake, but we promise: it’s real and it’s spectacular. The second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, published in 1934, defines this adjective as “pertaining to breakfast,” which may even make it the most important word of the day. Now, is there a word in English meaning “pertaining to second breakfast?” What about elevenses?
… spending the remaining hours of every day in reading, or taking exercise by way of fitting himself for his labours, or, to use his own strangely-invented phraseology, taking his ante-jentacular and post-prandial walks, to prepare himself for his task of codification.
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