Many of us will remember 2016 for a few words that will forever echo somewhere in the pits of our brains. 
 
 "Trump," for one, but also "bigly," "alt-right," and others we constantly heard during the presidential election season and its aftermath. But Merriam-Webster has a less discussed word on its mind that is apparently also on the minds of many dictionary users: Fascism. 
 
 Fascism, as of Nov. 29, was Merriam-Webster's most-looked-up word of the year, which means it's the leading candidate for the dictionary's annual "word of the year." 
 
 The folks behind the Merriam-Webster Twitter account are not happy with this, and on Tuesday they tried to get followers behind a campaign to look up other words. 
 
 'Fascism' is still our #1 lookup. 
 
 
 
 # of lookups = how we choose our Word of the Year. 
 
 
 
 There's still time to look something else up. — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 29, 2016 
 
 Merriam-Webster fans could, of course, just look up any word they wanted in hopes that one of their favorites would rise to the top. 
 
 However, the team are trying to streamline support to dethrone "fascism." 
 
 @MerriamWebster @samanthavicent I've searched "puppies" 523 times in the past 30 minutes. Anything change? — Carter Bryant (@CarterthePower) November 29, 2016 
 
 No, "What if everyone committed to looking up 'flummadiddle' twice a day?" is the most desperate-sounding tweet https://t.co/JpyFvSrrgf https://t.co/FsEIN63hnl — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 29, 2016 
 
 'Flummadiddle' is now in our top lookups!🙌 
 
 
 
 Not as many as 'fascism'. 
 
 
 
 But more than that phrase from Gilmore Girls. https://t.co/3dfrQzVUGp — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 29, 2016 
 
 So there we are: Flummadiddle is perhaps your underdog candidate to defeat fascism in 2016. Bet you never thought you'd read a sentence that included those two words. 
 
 Flummadiddle, if you're wondering, is defined by Merriam-Webster as "something foolish or worthless." ||||| Lookups for 'xenophobe,' 'bigot,' 'fascism' all spike following election 
 
 This Nov. 8, 2016 photo is of a polling place in a bowling alley in Chicago, (Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast, AP) 
 
 The same words have been trending on Merriam-Webster since Donald Trump became president-elect and most of them are pretty awful. 
 
 "Fascism," "bigot," "xenophobe," "racism," "xenophobia" and "misogyny" have been the top lookups on the online dictionary websites since just after the election. ("Resurgence" made the list too, but a spokeswoman for the online dictionary says that’s because of the movie.) 
 
 "Let's publish a new Trend Watch today!" 
 
 "But there aren't any new trends. The same words have been trending for almost a week." 
 
 "Oh." https://t.co/nVNJURSkCm — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 14, 2016 
 
 According to Merriam-Webster spokeswoman Meghan Lunghi the words have all been trending since Election Day, but those words have also had increased interest over the course of the last year. 
 
 The top three biggest spikes over the last year? 
 
 The word "xenophobe" (“one unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin”) has seen the largest increase in the past year —1,980%. 
 
 The word “bigot” (a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc") increased 500%. "Fascism" ("very harsh control or authority") went up 450% since last year. 
 
 Dictionary.com has also noticed an increase in lookups for those words. The words with the biggest increases in lookups over the last week were “electoral vote” and “popular vote." But "xenophobe," "misogynistic," "xenophobia," "divisiveness," "bigot," "secede," "fascism" and "racist" have also all spiked since the election, according to a spokeswoman for Dictionary.com. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2fTwk5H ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — Merriam-Webster has picked a small but powerful suffix as word of the year: ism. 
 
 The suffix "ism" is photographed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, in New York, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. Merriam-Webster has picked a small but powerful suffix as word of the year: ism. The top... (Associated Press) 
 
 The suffix "ism" is photographed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, in New York, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. Merriam-Webster has picked a small but powerful suffix as word of the year: ism. The top... (Associated Press) 
 
 But not just any ism. The top isms to earn high traffic spikes and big bumps in lookups on the dictionary company's website in 2015 over the year before are socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism and terrorism. 
 
 "We had a lot on our minds this year," mused Peter Sokolowski, the Springfield, Massachusetts-based company's editor at large, in a recent interview. "It's a serious year. These are words of ideas and practices. We're educating ourselves." 
 
 Pinpointing reasons why words go on the run at Merriam-Webster is an educated guess. The dictionary company tracks corresponding news events to link lookups to real life. And its researchers also crunch data in a way that filters out common words frequently looked up year after year after year when making their top annual choices. 
 
 Lookups for fascism corresponded to release of video in November showing a white police officer shooting a black teenager in Chicago, and the criminal charges that followed. Merriam-Webster also saw a stronger correlation in heavy traffic on its site for that word and "fascist" and flash points in Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign, including reports on his anti-Islam rhetoric. 
 
 The isms often collide, driving each other in popularity, Sokolowski said. 
 
 "Fascism we more closely associate as the response to various acts of terrorism. After the attacks in Paris and the attacks in Colorado Springs and in San Bernardino, and because of Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims, we then see the word fascism spike," he said. 
 
 Lookups of racism were high all year but had two noticeable spikes, one after the South Carolina church shootings and another amid the University of Missouri protests. 
 
 Sokolowski, a lexicographer by training, said one spike in lookups for feminism came in April and corresponded with reports on an Ohio middle school student who wore a T-shirt with the word printed on it in a school photo, only to have it digitally blacked out by school administrators. The school later apologized. 
 
 Reports on Caitlyn Jenner, Amy Schumer and Hillary Clinton all included discussion of feminism, as did reviews of the film "Mad Max: Fury Road" and chatter about previews of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." 
 
 In addition, Emma Watson's 2014 UN speech made the news again twice this year; first for inspiring Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai to call herself a feminist in a viral video, and again when it was revealed that Watson was asked not to use the word at all in the speech, Sokolowski noted. 
 
 The word socialism has Bernie Sanders to thank for its popularity. 
 
 "The big spikes have been associated with the fact that we have a presidential candidate who identifies as a Democratic Socialist," Sokolowski said. "We saw that even though socialism was in the Top 10 of the most looked-up words in the whole history of the site, it increased in a spike beginning in late July when Bernie Sanders had a multicity rally that was organized through social media and attracted about 100,000 people in 3,000 communities or more around the country." 
 
 In October, lookups for socialism spiked again during the first Democratic debate featuring Sanders and Clinton. 
 
 John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster, said socialism led the ism charge after a strong showing in 2012, but the company decided to go with the broader suffix instead as word of the year "because it was hard not see a bigger story staring us in the face, which was the profusion of ism words all over the most frequently looked-up list." 
 
 Other ism words on the move at Merriam-Webster.com this year were professionalism, masochism, federalism, pragmatism, existentialism, hedonism and Marxism. 
 
 Other words that sent people to the site in high numbers include marriage, hypocrite, respect, inspiration and minion. The company does not release raw numbers of lookups. 
 
 "Inspiration still kind of baffles us," Morse said. "I can't really tell you what it is in the world of 2015 that is so much different from '14 that inspiration has moved up." 
 
 The company began picking a word of the year in 2003. It went with "culture" in 2014. 
 
 This year's word of the year at Dictionary.com is identity. The folks at Oxford Dictionaries went with a pictograph, an emoji called the "Face with Tears of Joy." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie ||||| AP Photo Louche, demagoguery, and misogyny — the 2016 words befuddling Americans 
 
 While some may be bemoaning how Donald Trump has turned the presidential race into a reality show spectacle, there appears to be an upside — it may be making people smarter. 
 
 Merriam-Webster's online dictionary has seen a surge of lookups related to politics, with three candidates driving the traffic: Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. 
 
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 But Kory Stamper, a Merriam-Webster associate editor, said there's a clear standout. “Trump has brought up the motherlode of lookups," she said. 
 
 Trump got people searching “demagoguery” after his controversial comments on immigrants inspired South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to use the word to critique his rhetoric. 
 
 Graham said "We have to reject this demagoguery," while Perry called Trump's views "a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense." Trump tweeted a response to Perry, “.@GovernorPerry just gave a pollster quote on me. He doesn't understand what the word demagoguery means." Lookups of the word spiked July 17, the day the real-estate mogul tweeted. 
 
 Trump also contributed to Merriam-Webster's official "trend watch" list with the word “misogyny” after the Fox News debate Aug. 6, during which host Megyn Kelly asked him about names he’s called women, including fat pigs and dogs. The question led to a full-blown feud, where Trump attacked Kelly, retweeting messages calling her a bimbo. Lookups of the word "misogyny" spiked from Aug. 7-12. 
 
 Clinton has also influenced the lookups with “Hobson’s choice." The term was related to an op-ed in Fox News that said “By her own actions, Clinton dealt herself a Hobson's choice.” The article was referring to when Clinton turned over her email server to the FBI. The FBI is investigating whether any sensitive material was mishandled as a result of Clinton's use of a private server while she was secretary of state. Lookups of the term spiked Aug. 13, the day the story published. 
 
 The Democratic front-runner supplied another word spike this week, after the State Department released another batch of emails from her time at the agency. While there were a lot of gems in the more-than-7,000-page release, one that grabbed serious headlines was that her long-time confidant Sid Blumenthal thinks House Speaker John Boehner is “louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle.” 
 
 So many people turned to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary to look up "louche," the company announced the word was trending for two days in a row (according to the website "louche" means not reputable or decent. Ouch.) 
 
 “The top lookups tend to be news-driven, and as we ramp up into election season, more of the lookups are related to the nominee contenders. ‘Louche’ is one example, but there are probably a good dozen that have spiked recently,” Stamper said. 
 
 Other lookups driven by the election: socialism, cause célèbre, hyperbole, political correctness, and Trump. 
 
 “I'm sure that as we move forward, more lookups will be driven by the election. It's going to be a long, verbose 14 months,” Stamper said. ||||| Getty Merriam-Webster: Searches for 'socialism', 'fascism' skyrocketing due to Sanders and Trump 
 
 Bernie Sanders this year has sparked immense interest in socialism — so much so that the word is dictionary company Merriam-Webster’s most-searched term this year, an increase of 169 percent over 2014. 
 
 The Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate is a self-described “democratic socialist.” But in 2015, what exactly socialism is has seemed incomprehensible at times. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz this summer dodged a question about the difference between a Democrat and a socialist on MSNBC, instead choosing to contrast Democrats and Republicans. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Interest in the term spiked this summer and again after the first Democratic debate in October, when the word "socialist" was uttered four times and "socialism" twice. 
 
 “The fact that a major-party candidate for president embraces socialism shows that the term has moved beyond its Cold War associations,” Merriam-Webster wrote in its post announcing its words of the year. “The complex meanings of socialism have required new information at its dictionary entry.” 
 
 Pure socialism has been seen only rarely and generally briefly in some Communist regimes, according to the dictionary-maker. 
 
 “Far more common are systems of social democracy, now often referred to as ‘democratic socialism,’ in which extensive state regulation, with limited state ownership, has been employed by democratically elected governments (as in Sweden and Denmark) in the belief that it produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth,” Merriam-Webster said in explaining its definition. 
 
 "Fascism" was the second most-searched term this year. The dictionary said the word saw significant spikes in searches after the recent attacks in Paris, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and San Bernardino, California. Some pundits have begun describing Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s proposals, such as his ban on all Muslims from entering the U.S., as “fascist.” 
 
 Merriam-Webster defines the word as “a political philosophy … that exalts nation and often race above the individual,” but made no judgment as to whether Trump's rhetoric qualified him for the label.
– Merriam-Webster sent out a tweet this week subtly asking for help from the public in fixing the situation surrounding the lead contender for its "word of the year" honors. "'Fascism' is still our #1 lookup," it informed Twitter. "There's still time to look something else up." Without spelling out why that word has attracted so much attention in 2016, Mashable reports that several words "that will forever echo somewhere in the pits of our brains" have entered the vernacular this year at a brisk pace, including, per the online dictionary, "bigot, resurgence, diatribe, socialism, misogyny, [and] xenophobe." However, "fascism" has vaulted to the fourth-most-searched word in the site's history, per the Washington Post. "Guys, 2016 is so bad it made the dictionary sad," one Twitter user noted. But MW apparently doesn't want to leave 2016 with fond thoughts of "a political philosophy, movement, or regime … that exalts nation and often race above the individual and stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition." And the internet came to the rescue, with people flooding the lookup tool with searches for "puppies," "squirrels" (that was a dog's request), and, finally, a word that could soon overtake "fascism" if people keep up the campaign. "'Flumadiddle' is now in our top lookups. Not as many as 'fascism.' But more than that phrase from Gilmore Girls," the MW account tweeted, referencing the "in omnia paratus" ("ready for all things") term used on the show. (Merriam-Webster made a controversial decision about hot dogs earlier this year.)