Pedantic also winning the hearts and minds of the many ostentatious thought leaders.

Parts of speech have dominated the competition after one month of The Words We Speak. As we say repeatedly: this is surprising, and disheartening. Shouldn’t people know these words by now?

On the other hand, the time taken by many to define Noun, Adjective, and Verb is encouraging.

Phoneme, this week, got in on the action. The smallest unit of speech breached the top 10 position in Round 4. A sign that people are digging into the structure of language even more? Maybe. Noun (1) and Adjective (3) need to watch out.

Shaping another negative aspect of the competition is that Fascism (2), Concentration Camp (6), and Racism (17) are still in the mix of the national conversation. It’s reasonably safe to conjecture that the ones holding the national conversation are either culling these words into use as a matter of shock and awe, or as a carpet-bombing insulting methods, or both, or that these ones are just naive and insufficiently read and learned to practically out the above three words into proper use.

And that is where Pedantic comes in. Making a profound entry last week at number 5, Pedantic is becoming the darling of the competition. Whichever side of the national conversation (we may need to start calling it the national quarrel) you fall on, cases of pedantry are likely to be exhibited.

A chunk of the nation is recognizing that everyone and every thing being said have tinges of Pedantic in them. We all express a bit a pedantry every now and then, right?

Let’s break down Round 4 of The Words We Speak:

Round 4 – July 10, 2019

1 Noun

Round 3 ranking: 2

The word of all people, places, and things is back on top. Noun in the English circuit can enjoy the limelight, but analysts think that if it were to enter the international ring, Noun’s Slavic counterparts would run circles around our representative because of the Slavic Noun’s propensity to change forms based on position in the sentence.

2 Fascism

Round 3 ranking: 1

Exchanging last week’s number 2 spot with Noun is Fascism, as people just can’t seem to get enough if this member of the -isms. It’s hard to say much more about Fascism because we don’t really know if the word is being used legitimately or if its another one of those easy tear-down-your-opponent insults to use.

3 Adjective

Round 3 ranking: 3

We’ve just come from a country where Adjective’s Slavic cousins would, like with noun, run rickshaw over our English Adjective. Take a look at this example to see what we mean:

4 Pedantic

Round 3 ranking: 5

Our lede for this week says enough about our thoughts on why Pedantic is the darling of the competition. All these -isms and talks of Concentration Camp are being thrown around in the media and national conversation, all the while giving Pedantic a huge boost in confidence to make the claim of being the word of the year in our books.

5 Scholastic

Round 3 ranking: 7

A strange entry from last week, Scholastic climbed two spots this round and continues to defy understanding as to how it got here. A company of the same name made news by announcing a cute new campaign last week, but that’s all we can find out about Scholastic’s place at the table.

6 Concentration Camp

Round 3 ranking: 4

The American border continues to garner a lot of discussion, giving Concentration Camp a place to enter national thinking.

7 Culture

Round 3 ranking: 6

The ever-shaping Culture drops on one spot in the ranking this week. We love a place with a solid and exuberant culture, while likewise celebrating and allowing for other cultures to slide in – but it’s the dominant Culture with home court advantage that we root for.

8 Industrious

Round 3 ranking: 9

The Industrial Age of course was an Industrious one, but there may be a new way to think of how to use this word to define the workspace and work flow of this generation. A company of the same name is leading the way in making flexible workspaces. Perhaps now it’s time to call employees tied to a computer all day long and with the ability to work in any climate-controlled coffee shop or state-of-the-art shared office as Industrious.

9 Ostentatious

Round 3 ranking: 17

Quite a dramatic change in positioning for such a stubborn word. Perhaps if Ostentatious didn’t sound so burly it would be our darling of the competition instead of its kin Pedantic.

10 Phoneme

Round 3 ranking: unranked

The smallest player in the grammatical world makes a big splash at the number 10 position this week. Linguists laud Phoneme, and the slightest alteration of a Phoneme can radically change the end result of a sentence.

11 Couth

Round 3 ranking: unranked

In and For oddly held two consecutive position in the rankings for Rounds 2 and 3, respectively, but now Couth, a non-preposition, does the double-take this week. This ranking system may not be so Couth after all.

12 Couth

Round 3 ranking: unranked

Some bonus knowledge: The Scottish dialectical form of Couth is “Couthie”, meaning to be pleasant and kind.

13 Reversal

Round 3 ranking: unranked

Stock markets, sport teams’ fortunes, and political stances inevitably undergo a Reversal at some point. Seeing Reversal on the list this week may be due to cryptocurrency rates reversing into a higher price again.

14 Anthemion

Round 3 ranking: 19

The flower arrangement and decorative motif word climbed higher this week. Royal businesses from the UK brought on the word in the first place, and curiosity on what Anthemion is still lingers.

15 Communication

Round 3 ranking: 10

Communication sometimes involves redundancy of words and phrases. Repetitive verbiage often makes for good Communication. What makes for good Communication? Iterations.

16 Socialism

Round 3 ranking: 8

We have heard it said that Socialism is a great idea for the wrong species (the species being us humans).

There is one type of Socialism we adhere to: being social and friendly to everyone equally.

17 Racism

Round 3 ranking: 21

We believe that Racism is more prevalent in this competition than it actually is in the real world. Don’t take us for being supremely naive – Racism is out there. But we are, perhaps ostentatiously, under the impression that 99 percent of humanity gets along just fine.

18 Hi

Round 3 ranking: 18

It’s overdue time to say goodbye to Hi.

19 Verb

Round 3 ranking: 22

Verb is lucky that Gerund or Participle are not in the conversation, otherwise it would be long gone from this list. Yet again, the same can be said of Noun and Adjective. Phoneme poses the biggest threat to all three parts of speech in the rankings.

20 Rape

Round 3 ranking: 15

Down five spots.

We have been hesitant to dig into why Rape is in the top 25 looked-up words of the last month.

21 Aptitude

Round 3 ranking: unranked

Besides Couth, Aptitude is the first word in the rankings, albeit twenty-one spot down, to be of worth to thumb through a dictionary.

Aptitude, we argue, falls in line with Pedantic and Ostentatious; the masses have an Aptitude to have a disposition to a set a beliefs, and these set of beliefs are not going to be in a state of Reversal any time soon.

22 Churl

Round 3 ranking: unranked

Here’s one that taught us something!

What spurred Churl into the top 25 is in doubt, but we appreciate a relatively obsolete word making it into the conversation.

23 Gay

Round 3 ranking: 16

What makes one Gay? We are not talking about sexual inclination here, but the merriment and joyful side of the word. A good sporting spectacle and time with family and friends around the holidays seasons make us Gay.

24 Love

Round 3 ranking: 14

We love Love. We hate to see Love drop in the rankings. But even if it disappears from this list, we are sure that Love will abound in every person. (That’s our one soppy sentimentalism for this round.)

25 Minor Planet

Round 3 ranking: unranked

Recent talks of habitable asteroids and other tiny rocks in space made the news recently. We are still hurt about Pluto being designated a Minor Planet.