Trending: ‘perfidy’

Lookups spiked 25,200% on January 31, 2020

Why are people looking up perfidy?

Perfidy snuck its way to the top of the lookup chart on January 31, 2020, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used it to describe Senate Republicans' vote to block witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial:

Schumer: "No witnesses, no documents in an impeachment trial is a perfidy. It is a grand tragedy. One of the worst tragedies that the Senate has overcome. America will remember this day, unfortunately, where the Senate did not live up to its responsibilities."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 31, 2020

What does perfidy mean?

Perfidy is a noun meaning "the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal : treachery" or "an act or an instance of disloyalty." The word derives from the Latin perfidus, meaning "faithless," which is itself made of per- ("detrimental to") and fides ("faith").

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.