The Words of the Week - Oct. 2
Dictionary lookups from space, storms, and store shelves
‘Nor’easter’
A powerful weekend storm in the Northeast led to high lookups for nor’easter.
Connecticut’s nor’easter began to ease its grip Sunday, but still had plenty of rain, gusty winds and coastal flooding concerns in store. The strongest winds gradually diminished, while bands of rain were expected to continue into Monday.
—Dan Amarante, The New Haven Register, 28 Sept. 2026
Nor’easter is a variant spelling of northeaster, the relevant sense of which we define as “a storm with northeast winds.”
‘Protein’
Lookups for protein have been high lately, perhaps owing to the profusion of foodstuffs advertised as containing protein.
Some of my colleagues started keeping track of the counterintuitive sources of protein they saw in grocery stores and gas station markets, in warehouse clubs and bodegas, in chain restaurants and coffee shops. They found protein cookies and candies. Protein coffee and protein water. Protein vodka. Protein milk. Here were protein-enhanced Pop-Tarts, Uncrustables, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Cheerios. They saw protein-loaded meat sticks and brownie-batter protein balls, too. Protein chips and protein crackers.
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Protein may refer to “any of various naturally occurring extremely complex substances that consist of amino-acid residues joined by peptide bonds, contain the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, usually sulfur, and occasionally other elements (such as phosphorus or iron), and include many essential biological compounds (such as enzymes, hormones, or antibodies)” or to the total nitrogenous material in plant or animal substances. In recent decades, protein has also expanded in use to refer to a food (such as meat or tofu) that is rich in protein. The word can be traced back to the Greek prôtos, meaning “first, foremost.”
‘Magnetic field’
Discovery of a potential magnetic field outside of our solar system prompted increased lookups for magnetic field.
Astronomers reported radio signals from Beta Pictoris b, an exoplanet located about 63 light-years from Earth. … The team behind that discovery proposed that the radio emissions could be connected to auroral activity generated by a strong magnetic field.
—Beta Pictoris b appears to have an aurora caused by a powerful magnetic field. If confirmed, it would be the first such field known outside our solar system.
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We define magnetic field as “the portion of space near a magnetic body or a current-carrying body in which the magnetic forces due to the body or current can be detected.” Magnetic fields such as that of Earth cause magnetic compass needles and other permanent magnets to line up in the direction of the field. Magnetic fields force moving electrically charged particles in a circular or helical path.
‘Coffee’
National Coffee Day was this week, and lookups for coffee rose like the nation’s caffeine levels.
National Coffee Day is Sept. 29, and coffee lovers have a pretty good reason to celebrate with free coffee, special deals and plenty of excuses to get their caffeine fix this Tuesday.
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We define the relevant sense of coffee as “a beverage made by percolation, infusion, or decoction from the roasted and ground seeds of a coffee plant.” This is the oldest sense of coffee in English, dating to the late 16th century. Coffee may also refer to any of several tropical plants in the genus Coffea producing seeds from which coffee is prepared, the seeds themselves, a dehydrated product made from brewed coffee (as in “instant coffee”), and a cup of coffee (“we’ll have two coffees, please”). Coffee comes from both the Italian caffè and the Turkish kahve, originally from Arabic qahwa.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Ghost’
Ghost is a basic English word that goes all the way back a thousand years to the earliest recorded evidence of the language. However, with spooky season now upon us, we thought it might be worthwhile to dig a little deeper into Halloween-ish words, both familiar and obscure. Ghost, for example, originally meant “vital spark” or “the seat of life or intelligence,” which is still used in the phrase “give up the ghost.” The most common meaning today, “a disembodied soul” or “the soul or specter of a deceased person,” came next, a meaning based on the ancient folkloric notion that the spirit is separable from the body and can continue its existence after death. Gast, an older spelling of ghost, is the root of aghast (“struck with terror, shocked”) and ghastly (“frightening”). The German word for ghost is Geist, which is part of the word zeitgeist, literally meaning “spirit of the time.”
More recently, the verb ghost, originally used to mean “to haunt like a ghost,” has gained an informal sense defined as “to cut off all contact with (someone) abruptly and usually without explanation.” One of our earliest examples of its use comes from a thread in a Usenet group (rec.sport.golf) from 1996, titled “My instructor ‘ghosted’ me...should I lose the bum?”
At the bottom of the stairs, there was a ghost. I’d nicknamed him Swamp Steve because his hair was scraggly and dirty, like he’d just emerged from a swamp. He was rocking back and forth, hugging his knees, whisper-singing to himself, “Half a pound of treaaacle. That’s the way the money goes.”
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