The Words of the Week - May 1
Dictionary lookups from a royal visit, restaurant lingo, and fishy research
‘Pomp’
A visit this week from the king and queen of England led to increased usage (and corresponding lookups) of the word pomp.
The King and Queen have been formally welcomed to the US today with all the pomp and ceremony that Washington can muster.
—Emily Ferguson and Sophia Papamavroudi, The Express Online (United Kingdom), 28 Apr. 2026
We define the relevant sense of pomp as “a ceremonial or festival display (such as a train of followers or a pageant).” A dignitary treated with “pomp and circumstance,” to use a common phrase, is one treated with impressive formal activities or ceremonies. Pomp traces back to the Latin pompa (“procession, pomp”) and further back to the Greek verb pempein, meaning “to send.”
‘86’
News of a Justice Department indictment of former F.B.I. director James Comey for posting a photograph to social media of seashells on the beach arranged to read “86 47” caused a jump in lookups for both 86 and its alternate styling eighty-six on Tuesday.
Members of the administration, as well as Mr. Trump’s family, declared that the meaning of “86” was to kill, and that the seashell message amounted to a threat to assassinate the president.
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We define several senses of the verb 86. It is used informally to mean “to refuse to serve (a customer),” “to eject or ban (a customer),” and more broadly, in non-bar and non-restaurant contexts, “to eject, dismiss, or remove (someone).” It can also be used to mean “to remove (an item) from a menu,” and “to reject, discontinue, or get rid of (something).” The verb 86/eighty-six probably comes from rhyming slang for nix.
‘Compute’
A story about the cost of AI led to a rise in lookups for the word compute.
‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers
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Compute has long been used as a verb, with meanings such as “to determine or calculate by means of a computer” and “to determine especially by mathematical means.” The word has increasingly been used in recent years in a new way as a noun, meaning “the computational power or resources necessary for a computer or computer program to function,” especially in relation to cloud computing and the field of artificial intelligence. This noun use of compute has yet to be officially added to our dictionary, but an older noun use is defined in our Unabridged dictionary; compute has been used as a noun for hundreds of years (albeit rarely), as a synonym of computation or calculation, as in “a number beyond compute.”
‘Cocaine’
Reporting on a scientific study that involved giving cocaine to salmon led to more people than usual looking up the definition of cocaine, perhaps thinking there had to be some mistake.
Anyway, as weird as the study seemed, there was a point to it. Cocaine and its metabolites are “being excreted and subsequently detected in aquatic environments due to insufficient removal during wastewater treatment,” according to the paper published in the April edition of the journal Current Biology.
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If you find yourself having discussions with friends, family, or coworkers about cocaine, and would like to sound like an expert (but not the wrong kind of expert) on this subject you may inform all and sundry that cocaine is a bitter crystalline alkaloid obtained from coca leaves that is used especially in the form of its hydrochloride medically as a topical anesthetic and illicitly for its euphoric effects and that may result in a compulsive psychological need.
‘Manifesto’
Manifesto became a top lookup in connection with an attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
As investigators try to figure out a motive behind the attack, the alleged gunman’s purported manifesto has been obtained by the New York Post ...
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A manifesto is a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer. Manifesto is related to manifest, which occurs in English as a noun, verb, and adjective. Of these, the adjective, which means “readily perceived by the senses,” is oldest, dating to the 14th century. Both manifest and manifesto ultimately come from the Latin noun manus (“hand”) and -festus, a combining form of uncertain meaning.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Balderdash’
We know you might be thinking “I already know balderdash!” in reference to the familiar—if odd—word meaning “nonsense.” But today we are pulling back the curtain on its older, obsolete meaning, defined in our Unabridged dictionary as “an odd and usually objectionable mixture of drinks (such as beer and milk or beer and wine).” Its origins are still unknown, however. Do with this balderdash what you will.
Indeede Beere, by a Mixture of Wine, it enjoyes approbation amongst some few (that hardly understand wherefore) but then it is no longer Beere, but hath lost both Name and Nature, and is called Balderdash …
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