Indeed, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary on Monday named surreal its Word of the Year 2016, the honor given to the word or term with the sharpest spike in look-ups over the previous year.
Surreal, definition: “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream.”
It actually triggered not one but a series of sudden jumps in people looking it up.
The first came after terrorist bombings in Brussels in March. Thirty-two people died, as did three attackers.
It happened again in July after the coup attempt in Turkey and the terrorist attack in Nice, France in which a man driving a truck swerved back and forth through a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks, crushing 86 people to death.
But the biggest spike came after Trump — the tweeting, shoot-from-the-hip political neophyte and property tycoon who insulted women, minorities and Muslims during the campaign — defeated Hillary Clinton during the November 8 race for the White House.
“When we don’t believe or don’t want to believe what is real, we need a word for what seems ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ reality. Surreal is such a word,” the dictionary company said in a statement.
It said another word looked up big-time in 2016 was ‘bigly.’
“Donald Trump used the term ‘big league’ in an unusual way, as an adverb during a debate, and many people thought he said ‘bigly’,” said Merriam-Webster editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski.
Bigly actually is in the dictionary, and means in great scope, or with a blustering manner.
Clinton’s use of “deplorable” as a plural noun to describe some of Trump’s supporters — “a basket of deplorables” — was also a top trending word for 2016, Merriam-Webster said.