Hand it to Biden, who sparred with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan in a sharp debate, for this lighthearted lookup. “With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey,” Biden declared during a row with Ryan, sending lookups of the Irish-American word soaring. In fact, lookups of malarkey represented the largest spike of a single word in a single 24-hour period, a 3000 percent spike. The word means “nonsense” or more specifically, “insincere or pretentious talk or writing designed to impress one and usually to distract attention from ulterior motives or actual conditions,” said Sokolowski, adding “That’s exactly what Joe Biden was saying. Very precise.”
