Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a way with words -- and some of them are stirring intense interest on the internet.
Online lookups of the French phrase "faute de mieux" on the dictionary site Merriam-Webster surged 495,000 percent on Monday after Ginsburg used it in her concurring opinion supporting the court's ruling that struck down a pair of Texas abortion restrictions.
"When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety," Ginsburg wrote.
The phrase means, "for lack of something better," according to Merriam-Webster.
"It shows curiosity. It was lightning fast," Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster editor-at-large (and French speaker), said of the surge. Ginsburg "turned this phrase into a star."
The 495,000-percent surge compares the number of lookups on Monday with the average, which Sokolowski said was probably "once every three days."
Words and phrases searched for on Merriam-Webster closely track trends in word usage and offer insights into how people are engaging with modern language and current events, Sokolowski said.
"We find in terms of normal daily traffic that there are two kinds of patterns we frequently see with spikes," Sokolowski said.
"One is the use of an uncommon word used by a newsmaker," he said. For example, a Supreme Court opinion last week included the world "carceral" -- relating to prisons -- prompting a jump in searches.
"If you work in law, you're likely familiar with this word," Sokolowski said. "It's a little too technical for most of us, and sends us right to the dictionary."
Dictionary searches also spike when a common word is used in a uncommon situation. Last week, searches for "surgery" jumped following the assassination of British Member of Parliament Jo Cox, Sokolowski said.
"News reports indicated she had 'just left her surgery' when she was shot," he said. "In British usage, it refers to leaving an appointment with constituents. It sent a lot of people looking for that word. We don't even use it in [American] English."
Other searchers are cyclical -- lookups of "presumptive" and "caucus" jump during election years, while "plagiarize" rises during the first two weeks of September, when school typically starts -- Sokolowski said.
"Androgynous" spiked during the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, Sokolowski said. The word was used in almost every obituary for both stars.
Sometimes, searches increase when readers want to know how to pronounce a word, typically a foreign one.
"'Faute de mieux' hits that jackpot: It's both an unusual term and one that requires help with pronouncement for phonetics," Sokolowski said.
