…”Baldenfreude”.
The NYT has at least two things going for it:
- The “Time Topics” blog.
- The ability for readers to get word definitions by double-clicking on a word within an article.
Put those things together, and what do you get? A list of 50 words most looked up by NYT readers.
Number one on the list? “inchoate”. “baldenfreude”, which is actually a MoDo coinage, comes in at #6. “Kristallnacht” ranks 13th. Heretically, “Manichean” comes in at #28.
The takeaway from this?
Still, we should remember that this is journalism, not philology.