Connect with us

latest news

This is why ‘complicit’ is Dictionary.com’s word of 2017

Dictionary.com’s word of 2017 is all about “responsibility and culpability,” says lexicographer Jane..

Published

4 years ago

on

Dictionary.com’s word of 2017 is all about “responsibility and culpability,” says lexicographer Jane Soloman.

The site defines “complicit,” as “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others.”

The company said it picked the word because it’s “indicative of larger trends that resonated throughout the year.”

It also noted the term has been used frequently in U.S. culture and politics in stories about Russian election influence, mass shootings and widespread allegations of sexual assault and harassment.

Soloman, a lexicographer who was involved in the decision, spoke with As It Happens guest host Helen Mann about the word’s relevance in 2017.

How did the number of look-ups for complicit compared to previous years?

Look-ups for the word complicit went up 300 per cent in 2017 as compared to 2016.

Dictionary Word Of The Year

Russian election influence, the ever-widening sexual harassment scandal, mass shootings and the opioid epidemic helped elevate the word ‘complicit’ as Dictionary.com’s word of the year. (The Associated Press)

Do you think the people who are looking it up really don`t know what it means?

I think that sometimes people look up words in the dictionary because they don’t know what it means, but many times, people are going to a dictionary because they know what it means but they want to check to see if it means exactly what they think it means. There are a lot of reasons to look up a word in a dictionary beyond, “I don’t know what it means.”

Now in terms of complicit, I understand you’ve identified a number of spikes in searches for the word. The first came after an episode of Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live made a perfume commercial spoof. It was starring Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump and it was selling a scent called Complicit.’The tagline for this scent was, “The fragrance for the woman who could stop all this but won’t.”

As It Happens

Saturday Night Live creates ‘Complicit’, the fragrance, for Ivanka Trump

LISTEN

00:00 00:07

SHARE

Now, this is something that I came across in my research as we were trying to decide what we were going to pick for word of the year because it spiked in our data.

It was on March 12, the day after that Saturday Night Live [episode] aired. It spiked 10, 000 per cent. So there was a 10,000 per cent increase in look-ups the day after that aired for the word complicit.

View image on Twitter

View image on Twitter

Saturday Night Live – SNL

✔@nbcsnl

COMPLICIT:
com·plic·it
/kəmˈplisit/
(noun): a new fragrance for Ivanka Trumphttps://youtu.be/F7o4oMKbStE #WordOftheYear #SNL

Related Topics:
Up Next

How a powerful message from the world’s oldest tree saved a man from a midlife crisis
Don't Miss

A hip-hop reckoning? Why Drake is sitting out the Grammys
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

latest news

Qatar rejects Amnesty’s assertion that labour reforms have not translated on ground

Published

2 weeks ago

on

November 16, 2021

By

thepeninsulaqatar– The Ministry of Labour has issued a statement in response to Amnesty’s report “Reality Check 2021: A Year to the 2022 WorldCup”, stating that Qatar rejects its assertion that labour reforms have not translated into changes on the ground for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.

The statement is as follows:

Qatar rejects Amnesty’s assertion that labour reforms have not translated into changes on the ground for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.

Amnesty fails to document a single story from among the 242,870 workers who have successfully changed jobs since barriers were removed in September 2020, or from the more than 400,000 workers who have directly benefitted from the new minimum wage through salary increases and other financial incentives.

Since exit permits were removed in 2018, hundreds of thousands of workers have left Qatar and returned without permission from their employer; improvements to the Wage Protection System now protect more than 96 percent of eligible workers from wage abuse; new visa centres in labour-sending countries have significantly reduced exploitative practices before workers arrive in Qatar; and new rules extend the ban on summer working to minimise the effects of heat stress.

Qatar has also strengthened its enforcement measures to safeguard workers and prosecute employers who fail to comply with the law. The number of inspectors employed by the Ministry of Labour has increased year on year, as has their capacity to thoroughly investigate working conditions and refer violators for sentencing in the labour courts.

In the first half of 35,280,2021 accommodation and worksite inspections were carried out and 13,724 penalties were issued to violating companies, including worksite closures, fines and prison sentences. A further 4,840 site visits were made by labour inspectors to raise awareness of the new laws among employers and employees.

Every year, more companies are held accountable for violating the law. Systemic reform is a long-term process and shifting the behaviour of every company takes time. Through its actions, the government is sending a strong message to companies that violations will not be tolerated.

Qatar has never shied away from acknowledging that its labour system is still a work in progress. The government is committed to engaging collaboratively and constructively with international partners and critics to further improve standards for all migrant workers in Qatar

Qatar will therefore continue to consult with international experts including the ILO and trade unions. International NGOs will also be routinely consulted to provide their recommendations.

The reality is that no other country has come so far in such a short amount of time. Following Qatar’s lead, and as a sign of the programme’s wider impact, other countries in the region have now taken steps to introduce their own labour reforms.

Labour reform is a complex task, and Qatar believes that solutions are best found through dialogue and engagement. For this reason, and despite Amnesty’s criticism, Qatar will continue to work constructively with a range of labour experts and practitioners to build on the progress that has been made.

Continue Reading

latest news

Myanmar election body charges Suu Kyi with electoral fraud

Published

2 weeks ago

on

November 16, 2021

By

independent– Myanmar’s state election commission announced it is prosecuting the country’s ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi and 15 other senior political figures for alleged fraud in last November’s general election.

The announcement was published Tuesday in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper and other official media.

Allegations of widespread electoral fraud were the main reason cited by the military for its Feb. 1 seizure of power that toppled Suu Kyi’s government. Her National League for Democracy party was about to begin a second five-year term in office after its landslide victory in the polls. The army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party suffered unexpectedly heavy losses.

Independent observers, such as the Asian Network for Free Elections, found no evidence of substantive irregularities in the polls, though they criticized some aspects.

The action by the Union Election Commission could potentially result in Suu Kyi’s party being dissolved and unable to participate in a new election the military has promised will take place within two years of its takeover. However, the commission’s notice, dated Monday, did not specify which laws would be used to prosecute the accused.

In May, the military-appointed new head of the election commission said his agency would consider dissolving Suu Kyi’s former governing party for alleged involvement in electoral fraud and have its leaders charged with treason. Commission Chairman Thein Soe said an investigation had determined that the party had worked illegally with the government to give itself an advantage at the polls.

After taking power, the military dismissed the members of the election commission that had certified the results of last year’s poll and appointed new ones. It also detained members of the old commission, and, according to reports in independent Myanmar media, pressured them to state there had been election fraud.

The new commission declared last year’s election’s results invalid.

The new notice from the commission said Suu Kyi, former President Win Myint, other leading figures in her party and the commission’s former chairman were “involved in electoral processes, election fraud and lawless actions” related to the polls.

It accused 16 people of carrying out illegal actions, including compelling local election officials to obstruct military polling booths, threatening such officials in connection with advance voting for voters over 60 years old, forcing local officials to approve voting lists that included ineligible voters and interfering in campaigning to favor Suu Kyi’s party.

Suu Kyi is already on trial or charged in about a dozen criminal cases in which a conviction would almost certainly bar her from running for office again. Several of her top political allies also have been tried or are facing charges. Suu Kyi’s supporters as well as independent rights organizations contend that the cases are spurious and meant to discredit Suu Kyi and her party while legitimizing military rule.

Dissolving Suu Kyi’s party would follow a regional trend of dissolving popular political parties seen as a threat to governments in power.

Cambodia’s high court in 2017 dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party the sole credible opposition force, ahead of a 2018 general election.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court in 2020 dissolved the newly formed Future Forward Party, which had won the third highest number of seats in the lower house in the 2019 general election.

In both the Cambodian and Thai cases, the courts cited specific violations of the law for their rulings, but their actions were widely seen as reflecting political pressures.

Continue Reading

Health

More than 20 killed in attack on Kabul military hospital

Published

4 weeks ago

on

November 3, 2021

By

bbc– More than 20 people have been killed and at least 16 injured in a gun and bomb assault on a military hospital in the Afghan capital Kabul.

Attackers targeted the 400-bed Sardar Daud Khan hospital starting with two massive explosions outside the building, officials said.

Gunmen then broke into the hospital grounds, witnesses said.

An affiliate of the Islamic State group, IS-K, later said it had carried out the attack.

Photographs and video footage from Kabul showed a plume of smoke over the area and recorded the sounds of gunfire. A doctor in the building told the AFP news agency he had been sent to seek shelter in a safe room during the attack and could hear guns being fired.

Sayed Ahad told broadcaster EVN that one of the blasts was a suicide attack.

“As an Afghan citizen, I am really tired of this war, suicide and explosions,” he said. “How long do we have to endure this misery?”

  • ANALYSIS: The Taliban’s secretive war against IS
  • VOICES: How the Taliban takeover changed my life

The Taliban spokesman, Bilal Karimi, told the BBC that fighters from IS-K had entered the compound after detonating the first explosion at the entrance gate.

Mr Karimi said Taliban fighters shot and killed four IS-K attackers and captured one alive.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid meanwhile told Reuters news agency that Taliban special forces dropped by helicopter had stopped the attackers from entering the hospital itself, killing them at the entrance or in the building’s courtyard. All the assailants were killed in 15 minutes, he said.

Witnesses quoted by Reuters said they saw two helicopters over the area during the assault. The news agency reports that this would be one of the first times Taliban forces have used aircraft captured from the previous, Western-backed government during an operation.

The attack is the latest to hit Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control in August, after the US withdrew its last troops from the country.

IS-K, which stands for Islamic State Khorasan, has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks targeting civilians and Taliban fighters.

In August, a bombing by IS-K at Kabul international airport in August killed more than 150 civilians and 13 US soldiers.

The Sardar Daud Khan hospital has been targeted before. More than 30 people were killed and 50 others wounded in 2017 when gunmen dressed as doctors stormed the building. That attack was also claimed by the Islamic State group.

Continue Reading

Trending