Trending: ‘coyote’

Lookups spiked 675% during the October 22, 2020 presidential debate

Why are people looking up coyote?

President Trump used the term coyote during the final presidential debate on October 22, 2020:

These children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they used to use them to get into our country.

What does coyote mean?

Although of course coyote originally meant "a wild animal that is related to dogs and wolves and that lives in North America," it also has a slang meaning that was used during the debate: "one who smuggles immigrants into the U.S."

Where does coyote come from?

Coyote comes from the language spoken by many of the indigenous people of Central America, Nahuatl, the language that also gave us words like chocolate, avocado, and tomato.

Citations

Wholesale slayings by guides called coyotes given credence by immigration head.
— (headline) The San Francisco Examiner, 24 May 1923

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.