Rock the Vocab: From Apocalyptic to Utterly, Dictionary.com Uncovers Presidential Candidates Favorite Words
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
- systemic
- children
- seller
- Libyans
- Europeans
- recommend
- out-of-pocket
- elsewhere
- LGBT
- AIG
- contentious
- advise
- constant
- compact
- discrimination
- arena
- council
- brothers
- racism
- U.N.
Ted Cruz
- utterly
- cronyism
- ration
- Rubio-Schumer
- objective
- Jihad
- sessions
- distract
- suspend
- patrol
- Persian
- whatsoever
- clarity
- catastrophic
- flat
- booming
- Ayatollah
- IRS
- note
- abandon
John Kasich
- blue-collar
- surplus
- formula
- incumbent
- architect
- balanced
- budget
- miner
- discipline
- Pentagon
- Ohio
- Saudis
- hole
- incentive
- encryption
- unify
- foot
- civilization
- slap
- ill
Marco Rubio
- apocalyptic
- agent
- Guantanamo
- sophisticated
- modernize
- vat
- grandfather
- Moammar
- paycheck
- killer
- dozen
- enterprise
- capture
- century
- bless
- expensive
- Shia
- reasonable
- prove
- teach
Bernie Sanders
- handful
- crumble
- speculation
- tuition-free
- substantially
- cease-fire
- one-tenth
- U.K.
- Cayman Islands
- buck
- turnout
- quagmire
- Henry Kissinger
- Earth
- sum
- perpetual
- greed
- capita
- fossil
- unintended
Donald Trump
- eminent
- tremendous
- sudden
- scholar
- inversion
- Atlantic
- businessman
- nasty
- beautiful
- domain
- catastrophe
- currency
- nice
- excuse
- unbelievable
- incompetent
- disgrace
- Mexico City
- Japan
- 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.