Merriam-Webster reports that searches for the word spiked 4,793 percent after Comey used the word during his testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. FBI Director James Comey revealed on Wednesday that the idea of the FBI’s actions affecting the outcome of the 2016 election made him “mildly nauseous,” subsequently causing lookups for the word “nauseous” to spike. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, often after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. As for Comey’s use of the word, it’s an intriguing choice. “Nauseous,” as seen in an example on Merriam-Webster, is usually used to describe the feeling a child gets after they’ve “feasted overmuch on taffy and been forced to endure a long car ride.”So, Comey’s use of the word to depict how he felt after finding that his reopening of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails right before the election had a massive impact on the outcome of the election feels ... insufficient.

Source: Huffington Post May 03, 2017 17:35 UTC