12
Aug 11A formal expression of praise.
That’s the definition of “panegyric,” the NYT‘s most-looked-up word. The rest is here. Nieman Lab’s Megan Garber notes the list’s general dreariness:
Though journalism, as an institution, isn’t especially renowned for its sunny outlook on the world, it’s still remarkable how pessimistic and generally morose (hubris! feckless! dyspeptic!) the looked-up words tend to be. … If a newspaper is a cultural product, a nation talking to itself and all that, then the preponderance of profligacy and hauteur and duplicity and blasphemy on the list doesn’t bode terribly well for our collective conversation. If some future civilization were to come across the Times’ list and assume it’s representative of The Times We Live In, they’d probably feel sorry for us.