'Justice' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year after spike in searches

Merriam-Webster has chosen "justice" as its 2018 word of the year.

Editor at large Peter Sokolowski said ahead of Monday's announcement the word experienced specific spikes in lookups on the company's website for much of the year.

It also consistently bubbled up in the rankings from somewhere in the top hundreds of searches into the top 20 or 30 through 2018.

Merriam-Webster's word of the year follows the Oxford Dictionaries choice of "toxic" and Dictionary.com's pick of "misinformation."

Among Merriam-Webster's runners-up are "maverick," which spiked after the death of Sen John McCain, and "respect," which did the same following Aretha Franklin's passing.