Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
The results of the 2024 US presidential election shocked the world – or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is there any surprise that the Merriam-Webster word of the year was “polarisation”?
“Polarisation means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large. “It means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than the centre.”
The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarisation” reflects scientific and metaphorical definitions. It’s most commonly used to mean “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings.”
Merriam-Webster logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site. The organisation chooses its word of the year based on data, tracking a rise in search and usage.
Answer: 100 million
