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Rock the Vocab: From Apocalyptic to Utterly, Dictionary.com Uncovers Presidential Candidates Favorite Words

Based on Major, Political Debates, Dictionary.com Reveals Your Candidate in Word

OAKLAND, Calif., February 29, 2016 – As front-runners for the Democratic and Republican nominations will further emerge based on Super Tuesday results, Dictionary.com, the online and mobile resource dedicated to helping users master the art of language, today unveiled Your Candidate in a Word, a compelling look at the language favored by the current top presidential hopefuls. Based on analysis of the major presidential debates, one word has risen to the top for each nominee: systemic (Hillary Clinton), utterly (Ted Cruz), blue-collar (John Kasich), apocalyptic (Marco Rubio), handful (Bernie Sanders), and eminent (Donald Trump).

Through proprietary big data analysis from 15 main presidential debates, which took place between Aug. 6, 2015 and Feb. 13, 2016, Dictionary.com analyzed the language used by each candidate to identify the 20 words that were most statistically significant in each contender's speech.

While a number of the candidates’ word representations relate to major issues and campaign platforms, such as Clinton and LGBT and Rubio on Guantanamo, just as many are adjectives that paint a clear picture of each candidate’s speaking style and vocabulary, including Sander’s frequent use of perpetual and Trump’s favor of the word nasty.

“Every idea and belief, down to the level of the individual words chosen, counts when it comes to candidates speaking to Americans on their plans for the country if they were to be elected,” said Liz McMillan, CEO, Dictionary.com.“ These words shed light on the issues, policies, and rhetoric of individual candidates on an extremely granular level, ultimately giving us valuable insight on the people vying to be the next President of the United States.”

Below are the top 20 words or phrases favored by each candidate in Dictionary.com’s analysis:

Hillary Clinton

  1. systemic
  2. children
  3. seller
  4. Libyans
  5. Europeans
  6. recommend
  7. out-of-pocket
  8. elsewhere
  9. LGBT
  10. AIG
  11. contentious
  12. advise
  13. constant
  14. compact
  15. discrimination
  16. arena
  17. council
  18. brothers
  19. racism
  20. U.N.

Ted Cruz

  1. utterly
  2. cronyism
  3. ration
  4. Rubio-Schumer
  5. objective
  6. Jihad
  7. sessions
  8. distract
  9. suspend
  10. patrol
  11. Persian
  12. whatsoever
  13. clarity
  14. catastrophic
  15. flat
  16. booming
  17. Ayatollah
  18. IRS
  19. note
  20. abandon

John Kasich

  1. blue-collar
  2. surplus
  3. formula
  4. incumbent
  5. architect
  6. balanced
  7. budget
  8. miner
  9. discipline
  10. Pentagon
  11. Ohio
  12. Saudis
  13. hole
  14. incentive
  15. encryption
  16. unify
  17. foot
  18. civilization
  19. slap
  20. ill

Marco Rubio

  1. apocalyptic
  2. agent
  3. Guantanamo
  4. sophisticated
  5. modernize
  6. vat
  7. grandfather
  8. Moammar
  9. paycheck
  10. killer
  11. dozen
  12. enterprise
  13. capture
  14. century
  15. bless
  16. expensive
  17. Shia
  18. reasonable
  19. prove
  20. teach

Bernie Sanders

  1. handful
  2. crumble
  3. speculation
  4. tuition-free
  5. substantially
  6. cease-fire
  7. one-tenth
  8. U.K.
  9. Cayman Islands
  10. buck
  11. turnout
  12. quagmire
  13. Henry Kissinger
  14. Earth
  15. sum
  16. perpetual
  17. greed
  18. capita
  19. fossil
  20. unintended

Donald Trump

  1. eminent
  2. tremendous
  3. sudden
  4. scholar
  5. inversion
  6. Atlantic
  7. businessman
  8. nasty
  9. beautiful
  10. domain
  11. catastrophe
  12. currency
  13. nice
  14. excuse
  15. unbelievable
  16. incompetent
  17. disgrace
  18. Mexico City
  19. Japan
  20. hell

 

About Dictionary.com Dictionary.com, an IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) company, is the world's leading, definitive online and mobile resource dedicated to helping people master the art of language. We provide tens of millions of global monthly users with reliable access to millions of definitions, synonyms, audio pronunciations, example sentences, translations and spelling help through our services at Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com. Our leading mobile applications for reference and education have been downloaded more than 100 million times.