(CNN) Whats in a word?

A lot, if you ask the folks at Merriam-Webster.

Merriam-Websters 2019word of the yearisthey.Last yearsword wasjustice. And theyear before that, it wasfeminism.

Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer and Merriam-Websters editor at large, said that Merriam-Webster doesnt set out to capture the zeitgeist in its words of the year lists, like some otherdictionariesandlinguistic organizationsdo.

Instead, Sokolowski said that Merriam-Websters word of the year is determined by data: it must have seen a significant increase in lookups on the dictionarys website and app from previous years.

But taken together, these words show how we grappled with issues of political ideology, social justice, and identity politics.

They remind us about the biggest news stories of the past 10 years and how many of them havent gone away.

And they tell us about the broader shifts happening in our culture and big ideas that inspire us.

What it tells me is that words matter that people pay attention, Sokolowski said. People want to find more nuance, more history, more description, more accuracy in the definition.

Heres a look back at the past decade, as defined by Merriam-Websters words of the year.

2010:austerity Enforced or extreme economy, by one definition. This word kept coming up innews reportsabout the economic panic and protests triggered by thedebt crisis in Greece, referring to pay cuts in the public sector, tax increases and other measures intended toprevent economic collapse.

2011:pragmatic At the time,Merriam-Webster wrotethat the word could suggest a national mood, an admirable quality that people value in themselves and wish for in others, especially in their leaders and their policies. But in hindsight, Sokolowski said its just a word people look up a lot.

2012:socialism, capitalism This was an election year, and the word socialism was often thrown aroundin reference toObamacare, as well as after party conventions and presidential debates. And when people looked up socialism, they usually looked up capitalism too.

2013:science It might seem odd that people were looking upsuch a basic word, until you remember theconversations we were havingthat year. Federal funding cuts threatened the future of innovation. Discoveries about theHiggs bosonand successes incloning human stem cellsprompted philosophical and ethical debates. Climate change was treated like a subjectup for debate, and science itself was facing acrisis of skepticism.

2014:culture Another extremely broad word. Merriam-Webster said it conveyed a kind of academic attention to systemic behavior, and allowed us to isolate and talk about ideas, issues, and groups. News outlets covered hookup culture,rape culture,car culture the list goes on.

2015:-ism So this one isnttechnicallya word. But Merriam-Webster said the suffixrepresents a group of wordsthat were collectively looked up millions of times: socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism and terrorism. With Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump announcing presidential runs, and attacks like the one at a South Carolina churchcalling into questionthe definition of terrorism, its easy to see why.

2016:surreal Merriam-Webster said peoplelook this word up spontaneouslyin moments of shock and surprise, defining it as marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream. The 2016 election comes to mind, but the dictionary also saw spikes after the Brexit vote, the Pulse shooting and Princes death.

2017:feminism Byone definition, it means organized activity on behalf of womens rights and interests. This was the year of the#MeToo movement, ofwomens marchesaround the world. It was the year Wonder Woman and The Handmaids Tale captivated viewers on screens big and small. Coincidence? Merriam-Webstersays not.

2018:justice The word wasat the centerof some of the years biggest stories: the Mueller investigation, Brett Kavanaughs hearing in Congress, criminal justice reform, as well as the fights for racial, economic and gender equality.

2019:they We talkeda lot about pronounsthis year, and Merriam-Webster noticed. The word is increasingly used to refer to someone whose gender identity is nonbinary, showing up in email signatures, Twitter bios and conference name tags. In September, Merriam-Webster added that definition to its dictionary,noting thattheres no doubt that its use is established in the English language.

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What Merriam-Websters words of the year say about the past decade - WHNT News 19