• Complicit — competitor Dictionary.com’s word of the year.
  • Recuse — in reference to Jeff Sessions and the Russia investigation.
  • Empathy — which hung high all year.
  • Dotard — used by Kim Jong-un to describe Trump.
  • Syzygy — the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies, such as the sun, moon and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse.
  • Gyro — which can be pronounced three different ways, a phenom celebrated in a Jimmy Fallon sketch on “The Tonight Show.”
  • Federalism — which Lindsey Graham referred to in discussing the future of the Affordable Care Act.
  • Hurricane — which Sokolowski suspects is because people are confused about wind speed.
  • Gaffe — such as what happened at the Academy Awards when the wrong best picture winner was announced. That was a go-to word for the media, Sokolowski said.