Donald Trump

From Carnage to Covfefe, 2017 Was an ‘Unpresidented' Year in Words

"Basically we're getting a vocabulary lesson for the nation as a consequence of the news"

This year brought political scandals, gaffes and feuds, and plenty of them sent people to the dictionary in droves as words like dotard and covfefe hit the news.

NBC News talked about the best words made famous by politics this year with Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer and editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster, the dictionary whose sassy Twitter feed picks up on trending words.

The word dotard had a 35,000 percent spike in look-ups after Korean strongman Kim Jong Un used it to insult President Donald Trump.

"Basically we're getting a vocabulary lesson for the nation as a consequence of the news," Sokolowski said. "I can only assume it was an unusual translation, an obsolete translation."

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