New England Public Radio releases a special In Contrast in partnership with Merriam-Webster. The special features a conversation about the 2018 Word of the Year with Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski and Associate Editor Emily Brewster.

Sokolowski and Brewster count down the top 10 words of the year, including laurel, lodestar and respect, with In Contrast host, Ilan Stavans before digging into the 2018 Word of the Year, “justice.”

“Looking at the year through the prism of vocabulary by analyzing our lookup data sometimes draws attention to a word or an idea that has been on people’s minds but that might otherwise have escaped notice,” explains Sokolowski. ‘”Justice” is a word that is at the heart of many issues that we are dealing with today. Through the dictionary, we can make these connections with words that tell us something about our culture, our language, and ourselves.’