•December 8, 2021•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

The Top 10 list, a popular news media vehicle for recapping the year and providing us with lifesaving copy when the news world tends to hibernate, can sometimes be upended when news actually happens.
It always seems to bite us in the rear end when we revisit luminaries we lost during the year.
For the purposes of this column, however, I turn to Merriam-Webster’s announcement of its word of the year and its Top 10 lookups.
But what happens if such terms as “Invasion from Xenon 362,” “flesh-eating middle-schoolers” or “No-mo-California” enter the zeitgeist before Jan. 1? I guess the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster will have egg on their faces, won’t they?
That being said, and I’ll no longer delay the point of this offering: M-W’s word of the year is “vaccine.”
Surprised? I wasn’t, either.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.