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TAKE THE QUIZ‘relevancy’
Trending:Lookups spiked 5,600% on November 2, 2018.
Relevancy basked in the warm glow of embodying its own meaning, after a fashion, after Ariana Grande used the word in a tweet directed at her ex-fiancé, one Pete Davidson.
She then wrote two more tweets seemingly about Davidson and this SNL stunt. "For somebody who claims to hate relevancy u sure love clinging to it huh," Grande wrote. "Thank u, next."
— Christopher Rosa, Glamour (glamour.com), 1 Nov. 2018
We define relevancy as either “relevance” or “something relevant.”
While relevancy is often viewed as a less-common synonym for relevance, it is the older word, in use for hundreds of years before relevance entered our language (relevancy dates to the middle of the 16th century, and relevance first occurs in the middle of the 18th). The word comes from the Latin relevans, the present participle of relevare ("to raise up”).
You shall have libertie to say for your selfe, either against the relevancie of the Inditement, or verification produced, what you thinke best.
— John Spottiswood, A True Relation, of the Proceedings Against Iohn Ogilvie, a Jesuit, 1615
Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.