The word of the year isn't a word at all, according to Merriam-Webster dictionaries: It's a suffix, "ism." The editors of Merriam-Webster found that three little letters kept appearing at the end of words their users were looking up in 2015.
Some of the most searched-for words on the dictionary maker's site this year included socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism, and terrorism.
This isn't the first time an "ism" gets the honor: "capitalism" and "socialism" shared it in 2012. But this year, "ism" will join previous Words of the Year that, read together, form a sort of one-word recent history of discourse in the US. In 2003: "democracy," followed by "quagmire." In 2004, "blog" and "incumbent." In 2006, "truthiness." "Bailout" in 2008, followed by "austerity" in 2010.
