Current events urge us to consult the dictionary. This is what emerges from the top 10 words which recorded the highest increases in searches this year on the site of Robert. The press release sent to the press this Tuesday reveals that PFAS (pronounced “pifasse”) thus comes in tenth place in the ranking. This acronym from English designates per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. It gained momentum in April when the National Assembly adopted a bill against these “eternal pollutants”.
Then comes “nyctalope”, much funnier. A teacher from Nice excluded a student in October who said this word while she was talking about cats… Knowing its definition – the ability to see in the night – would have been very useful to her and would have prevented her from feeling insulted. The anecdote, repeated on social networks, apparently encouraged Internet users to turn to Le Robert to ensure that the teacher had indeed been wrongly sensitive.
Entryism – or the fact of influencing a group by using the people brought into it -, the running mate – a political figure appearing on the same electoral list as another – were respectively the eighth and third word with the highest increase in consultation. All this for questions linked to politics, a declaration by Gabriel Attal then Prime Minister in April for the first, and the American electoral campaign for the second.
The “woodlice” sought after the dissolution of the Assembly
The word that tops the ranking is “hubris”, or the feeling of pride pushing one to excess. A term which, underlines the press release, can be used to talk about Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Emmanuel Macron. Robert specifies that the peak of research took place between the beginning of June and the beginning of July, after the dissolution of the National Assembly.
In reaction to this dissolution, Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy at the time, declared that “the floors of the ministries and palaces of the Republic are full of woodlice. » This was enough to make “woodlice”, the “small arthropod animal” the fourth word with the highest growth in consultation on the online dictionary.
Our file to avoid spelling mistakes
The “pager” (second in the top) had its moment of glory in September, when hundreds of these small boxes for receiving messages exploded simultaneously during an Israeli attack targeting members of Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Femicide”, or the murder of a woman because of her gender, generally committed by her spouse or ex-spouse, is fifth in the ranking. “Paralympic”, the adjective attached to the Games where athletes with disabilities compete, is seventh thanks to Paris 2024.
“Wokism”, the most searched word, as in 2023
And in the middle of all this, in sixth place, appears “pox”. The Robert admits that he cannot explain why this pathology was particularly searched for on his online dictionary. He hypothesizes a confusion with the term “smallpox”, when the mpox epidemic, incorrectly called “monkey pox” prompted the WHO to declare a public health emergency of international concern.
But the superstar of online Dico, the word that “continues to break all records”, is “wokism”, which was already the most searched word last year. The Robert speaks of it as “a current of thought of American origin which denounces injustices and discrimination”, a definition which is itself already debatable.
The dictionary indicates that the word is most often “used in a pejorative manner”. This was the case of detractors of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in July, one of the two events, with the election of Donald Trump in the United States presidential election in November, which coincided with peaks of consultation “without previous » on the website of Robert. Given that the meaning of this word varies according to individuals and points of view, it is a safe bet that in 2025 it will still be the most searched word…