Coming up on Word Matters, Merriam-Webster's 2021 Word of the Year.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea, Peter Sakalowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Merriam-Webster has declared a Word of the Year every year since 2003.
We announced our 18th such word in late November,
and Peter and I are going to tell you all about it.
On Monday, November 29th, Merriam-Webster announced its Word of the Year, Peter.
What is our Word of the Year for 2021?
That's right, Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2021 is vaccine.
Not surprising to you and me.
That's right.
Neither of us was surprised.
But explain to everybody why we were not surprised.
What is it that determines what the word of the year will be?
We look at the search results, the data of the website at maryandwebster.com.
In other words, the actual online dictionary.
gets a lot of lookups.
And one of the most interesting things, I think,