Even in D.C., which is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s smartest cities, people need to refer to a dictionary every now and then.
So just what presumably six-syllable words are locals looking up?
Dictionary.com compiled lists of the top 10 word searches in various cities, and D.C.’s top two are—-wait for it—-“gun-control” and “Whig.”
According to Dictionary.com, D.C. users searched for “gun-control” 29.4 more times than the national average and searched for “Whig” 26.1 times more than Dictionary users across the country.
Here are the rest of D.C.’s top searches on Dictionary.com, followed by how many more times D.C. looks up these words than the national average:
- paralympic (26)
- retiree (24.3)
- fanciest (22.6)
- mixologist (15.3)
- oozing (12.8)
- xxx (11.7)
- carnelian (11)
- blah (7.8)
In case you’re actually curious, here are the definitions of “gun-control” and “Whig” via Dictionary.com:
Gun Control-(noun) government regulation of the sale and ownership of firearms.
Whig- (verb)- to move along briskly
(noun) American history; A member of the patriotic party during the Revolutionary period; supporter of the revolution.
British politics; a member of a major political party (1679–1832) in Great Britain that held liberal principles
and favored reforms: later called the Liberal party.
First person to define “carnelian” in the comments gets a Washington City Paper T-shirt.
Gun photo by Shutterstock