It fascinated me then when I released my trends report at the start of 2019 that JUSTICE was the previous year’s chosen word according to Merriam-Webster. The renown dictionary behemoth said that “It was a top lookup throughout the year, with the entry being consulted 74% more than in 2017. The concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice.” And the word “they” was the 2019 word of the year because they said the tiny, unassuming personal pronoun “had undergone a rather radical transformation in usage in recent years — and found itself at the heart of some wide-ranging cultural conversations in the process.”

I can’t help but wondering what the word for 2020 will be. There are so many that come to mind. Right now, according to Merriam-Webster, the words that are increasing in terms of daily lookup which seem to be tied to the news of the day are: capricious (SCOTUS upholds DACA), defund (citizens call for reduced police budgets) and j’accuse (Mattis publishes letter to President Trump). Juneteenth might just be today’s word.

It will sure be a blockbuster word that either speaks to the coronavirus or to BLM. It will be a word that symbolizes what a strange and unsettling year we have all been through.