It's the time of year when people try to make sense of the past 12 months by coming up with lists -- the best this and the worst that, what was in and what was out and, above all, Top 10 Everything. Some of the latter lists are so familiar and expected that New Year's wouldn't be the same without them: top 10 movies, top 10 songs, top 10 books, top 10 holiday destinations, and so on.
But then there are the fringe lists. For example, we notice for the first time a list compiled by a distinguished U.S. dictionary publisher: 2003's top 10 words, based on "lookups" on Merriam-Webster's online dictionary. Here they are, in descending order:
democracy
quagmire
quarantine
matrix
marriage
slog
gubernatorial
plagiarism
outage
batten