This 'Word of the Year' Is Actually a Suffix

First Oxford Dictionaries went with an emoji. Now Merriam-Webster has named its "word of the year," and it isn't a word at all. "Ism" was given the honor after words like socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism, and terrorism saw high traffic on the dictionary's website in 2015.

Searches for "fascism" in particular followed the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video and Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims. "We had a lot on our minds this year," an editor tells the AP. "It's a serious year. These are words of ideas and practices. We're educating ourselves." A less-serious term commonly searched, per Quartz: minions. The AP pinpoints when the other various -ism words were most searched in 2015; more here. (More word of the year stories.)