What were your top lookups in the past year?

As part of our occasional search monitor series, here’s a clickable word cloud displaying about 350 of your most-viewed words in Oxford Dictionaries Online. Instead of looking at the last month, we thought it would be fun to look at the most looked-up words since Oxford Dictionaries Online’s inception.

Over the last year a lot of words have been looked up in ODO. This is, of course, music to our lexicographic ears. In fact, it’s awesome. We love it, nay heart it. Although it is fair to say we were nonplussed at the word which occupies the top spot – get. But then people do use dictionaries for a whole host of reasons. LOL.

A surprisingly high entry is nom nom, only when you consider that it is a relatively new addition to our online dictionary. It’s had a lot of views in a short time. But spare a thought for wool-sorter’s disease, zwitterion, and andantino. It’s fair to say that they were not in great demand. Let’s hope they don’t lose face among their more popular neighbours.

Hover over the words to find out more, or click to see the full dictionary entries.

Posted on: August 5 2011 | Categories: Dictionaries and lexicography, Interactive features | Tags: heart, inception, interactive, search monitor, top lookups