The Words of the Week - Oct. 30
Dictionary lookups from the season, the Stallones, and the Simpsons
‘Nepotism’
Lookups for nepotism were high this week, perhaps owing to a notable and spicy use by a celebrity.
Sylvester Stallone defends casting daughter in Tulsa King: ‘Of course it’s nepotism, you idiot’
—(headline), The Independent (United Kingdom), 25 Oct. 2026
Nepotism refers to favoritism (as in an appointment to a job) based on kinship. English speakers have kept nepotism in the family since the late 1600s, having adopted it from the French, who were inspired by Gregorio Leti’s 1667 book Il nipotismo di Roma (English title: The History of the Popes’ Nephews). The book explores a practice introduced by Pope Sixtus IV: during his papacy in the late 15th century he granted many special favors to members of his family, in particular to his nephews. This practice of papal favoritism was carried on by his near successors. Today, nepotism is mostly associated with business and politics. In recent informal English use, the shortened form nepo has been hitched to the denigrating term baby to refer especially to celebrities who had a parent (or two) who were also in the entertainment industry.
‘Referendum’
With elections being held all over the globe, lookups have been high for referendum.
This November, Broward County voters will once again be asked to decide whether to renew an investment in Broward County Public Schools (BCPS). The referendum will appear on the ballot as School Board Question 1.
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Referendum may refer to the principle or practice of submitting to popular vote a measure passed on or proposed by a legislative body or by popular initiative, or to a vote on a measure so submitted. Since the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide for referenda at the national level, referenda tend to be on local and state issues. In most locales, a few questions usually appear on the ballot at election time, often involving such issues as new zoning ordinances, new taxes for schools, and new limits on spending.
Referendum is also seeing increased broader, figurative use for a vote or election perceived to be measuring approval of something not being voted on directly.
One Race in Texas Has Become a Referendum on Bigotry …
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‘Macabre’
Spooky season strikes again, with macabre becoming a top lookup in the days leading up to Halloween.
If you’ve ever found yourself captivated by a bizarre fact, an unsettling mystery or a question too strange not to ask, mark your calendar for Oct. 28. … Equal parts informative and delightfully macabre, this talk is perfect for anyone who loves science, mystery and the wonderfully weird.
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We define three senses of the adjective macabre: “having death as a subject,” “dwelling on the gruesome,” and “tending to produce horror in a beholder.” We trace the origins of macabre to the name of the Book of Maccabees, which is included in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons of the Old Testament and in the Protestant Apocrypha. Sections of this biblical text address both the deaths of faithful people asked to renounce their religion and the manner in which the dead should be properly commemorated. In medieval France, representations of these passages were performed as what became known as the “dance of death” or "dance Maccabee," which was spelled in several different ways, including danse macabre. In English, macabre was originally used in reference to this “dance of death” and then gradually came to describe anything grim or gruesome.
‘Cromulent’
An op-ed in the New York Times drove lookups for cromulent.
One important result of this interplay was the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States, which shielded presidents from criminal prosecution as long as their actions related to core duties and official acts. … Under this standard, even Watergate may well have been perfectly cromulent.
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Cromulent, which we define as “acceptable, satisfactory,” first appeared in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons, in which the schoolchildren of Springfield are watching a film about the founding father of Springfield, Jebediah Springfield. The film ends with Jebediah intoning, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” One teacher at the back of the room leans over to another and says that she’d never heard the word embiggen before she moved to Springfield. “I don’t know why,” the other teacher replies. “It's a perfectly cromulent word.”
The word cromulent ended up in the script courtesy of a showrunner’s challenge to the writers. According to the DVD commentary for The Simpsons, the showrunners asked the writers to come up with two made-up but plausible-sounding words. Writer David X. Cohen came up with cromulent as one of those words. It eventually crept into popular use, and was added to our dictionary in 2023. For more words and phrases coined or popularized by The Simpsons, embiggen your vocabulary with this cromulent article.
‘Chicanery’
Chicanery has been much used and much looked-up this week, especially in references to political campaigns as the U.S. is in the midst of mid-term elections.
This chicanery is reprehensible.
—Their attention might be better directed to a few counties in Comer’s district and several in southeastern Kentucky’s 5th District, where election chicanery lingers.
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We define the relevant sense of chicanery as “deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry, trickery.” The word was borrowed from French chicanerie, “quibbling on minor points of law brought up to complicate a judicial case,” in the late 1500s.
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Ignis fatuus’
Ignis fatuus, in Latin means, literally, “foolish fire.” In English, it has come to designate a hovering or flitting light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground that is attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter. Other names for this light are jack-o'-lantern and will-o'-the-wisp—both of which are connected to folklore about mysterious men, Jack and Will, who carry a lantern or a wisp of light at night. A Scottish name for ignis fatuus is spunkie, from spunk, meaning “spark” or “a small fire.” It has also been told that ignes fatui (the Latin plural form) are roaming souls. No doubt these stories spooked listeners by candlelight, but in time, advancements in science not only gave us electricity to dispel the darkness but proved ignis fatuus to be a visible exhalation of gas from the ground, which is rarely seen today.
