The Words of the Week - July 4
Dictionary lookups from economics, the Senate, and the Fourth of July
‘Intifada’
Lookups for intifada were high early in the week.
Mamdani’s refusal to reject the phrase “globalise the intifada,” on the grounds that it expresses “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights” has been seized upon as an indication that he supports some kind of violent jihad—a reading that ignores his frequent assertions that Israel has the right to exist and condemnations of any violence against Jews.
—Nesrine Malik, The Guardian (London), 30 June 2025
We define intifada broadly as a synonym of uprising and rebellion and specifically “an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” The word comes from the Arabic intifāḍa, which translates literally to “the act of shaking off.”
‘Vote-a-rama’
Vote-a-rama got a bump in lookups this week as such a voting session took place in the U.S. Senate.
The Senate’s marathon voting session on President Trump’s sweeping agenda bill is expected to begin at 9 a.m. today. During the session, known as a vote-a-rama, lawmakers may offer as many amendments to the bill as they want to vote on. Only after that's finished can a final vote on the bill be held.
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Vote-a-rama refers to an unusually large number of debates and votes that happen in one day on a single piece of legislation to which an unlimited number of amendments can be introduced, debated, and voted on.
‘Concentration camp’
Lookups for concentration camp were higher than usual this week, in connection to the construction of a migrant detention center in Florida.
The White House revealed that President Donald Trump will be visiting the new undocumented migrant detention center this week, also known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, located in Southern Florida. Social media users reacted with shock and disgust as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the President’s visit to the new facility during a press conference at the White House on Monday. … Social media users quickly reacted to Leavitt’s announcement with horror, referring to the facility as “barbaric” and comparing it to a concentration camp.
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We define concentration camp as “a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.” Concentration camp is used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners.
‘Dollar’
Lookups for dollar were higher than usual this week following news that the value of the dollar is much lower than usual.
The dollar is off to its worst start to a year in more than half a century. The United States’ currency has weakened more than 10 percent over the past six months when compared with a basket of currencies from the country’s major trading partners. The last time the dollar weakened so much at the start of the year was 1973, after the United States had made a seismic shift that had ended the linking of the dollar to the price of gold. This time the seismic event is President Trump’s efforts to remake the world order with an aggressive tariff push and a more isolationist foreign policy.
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In the mountains of Bohemia is the small town of Jáchymov. In the early 16th century, the town was known by its German name, Sankt Joachimstal. At that time, a silver mine was opened nearby, and coins were minted to which the name joachimstaler was applied. In German this was shortened to Taler. Shortly afterward the Dutch or Low German form daler was borrowed into English to refer to the Taler and other coins that were patterned after it, such as the Spanish peso, which circulated widely in Britain’s North American colonies. Our modern word dollar is a different spelling of this daler. The dollar was proposed as the monetary unit of the United States in the early 1780s, and adopted formally in 1792 (although they were not actually issued as currency until 1794). Since that time our language has taken on a remarkable number of synonyms for this word for “100 cents,” often found in the form of slang. We have paid for things with bones, bucks, smackers (and smackeroos), clams, iron men (for silver dollars), plunks, and simoleons.
‘Barbecue’
Backyard barbecues have long been a staple of Independence Day celebrations, which probably explains the recent increase in lookups for the word barbecue
If you plan to bring your dog to a Fourth of July barbecue there are a few things to keep in mind. Is the barbecue during the day, before the fireworks? Is the barbecue in your friend's enclosed yard or in a public park? Definitely keep your dog on a leash in a nonenclosed and/or public area.
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We define several senses of both the noun and the verb barbecue. The verb can mean “to roast or broil (food) on a rack or revolving spit over or before a source of heat (such as hot coals or a gas flame)” or “to prepare (food) by seasoning (as with a marinade, a barbecue sauce, or a rub) and cooking usually slowly and with exposure to low heat and to smoke.” The noun may refer generally to barbecued food, more specifically to a large animal roasted whole or split over an open fire or a fire in a pit, an often portable fireplace over which meat and fish are roasted, or to a social gathering especially in the open air at which barbecued food is eaten. Barbecue is a borrowing from the American Spanish word barbacoa (“wood framework for supporting cooked or dried meat”) which in turn was probably borrowed from Taino, the language of the indigenous Taino people of Hispaniola.
‘Beat/turn swords into plowshares’
Lookups for the literary idiom beat/turn swords into plowshares were high this week, driven by an article published by Canada’s CBC that reversed the idiom’s elements (and used the Canadian spelling ploughshares).
Is Canada beating ploughshares into swords with its NATO 5% pledge? Not likely
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To turn or beat swords into plowshares is to stop fighting wars and begin to live peacefully. The idiom comes from the Biblical book of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Plowshare refers to the part of a plow that cuts the furrow, the trench in the earth where farmers sow their crops.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Ick’
Ick has been used in print as an interjection to express disgust at something unpleasant or offensive since at least the mid-20th century, and likely has been used in speech for much longer. But there is a more recent noun use of ick that we are keeping an eye on and covering as part of a series of articles on slang. The noun ick, usually styled the ick, refers to a sudden feeling of disgust or repulsion that causes a permanent reversal in feeling toward a romantic (or potential romantic) partner. Ick is also used (often without the, as in “a list of icks”) for the cause of the disgust or repulsion itself.
Use of ick or the ick as a noun has been credited to an episode of the television show Ally McBeal that aired in 1998 in which the titular character tells her friend Renee that “Since he’s my boss I don’t want to go out with him just to get hit with the ick.” It was also used in a 2003 episode of Sex and the City. Ick is often used for a quality/behavior of someone that others might find trivial or unique as a source of disgust or repulsion. But as the song goes, different strokes for different folks, and so on and so on and shooby dooby dooby.
The causes of the ick range from the understandable—being rude to waitstaff on dates, disrespectful behaviour—to the downright niche. In a list of icks currently being circulated on WhatsApp, examples include: “Two phones on table,” “Grown adults on manual scooters,” “Spotify with ads,” “Coloured bed sheets,” to name a few.
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