#10: Morbidity

Morbidity spiked dramatically in September, with reports on the condition of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to succumb to Ebola in the U. S.

One reason this word has probably been looked up so frequently is because of confusion over morbidity and mortality. Morbidity comes from the Latin word for "disease" (morbus) and means "the relative incidence of disease," whereas mortality comes from the Latin word for "death" (mors) and means "the number of deaths in a given time or place."

See our editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, talk about the 2014 Word of the Year selections; plus check out our Word of the Year Retrospective, with editors' top picks from past years.