PROVIDENCE – According to Google Trends, the word Rhode Islanders most frequently Google the correct spelling of is “liar.”
A four-letter word, but not one of those words, liar is defined by Miriam Webster as “a person who tells lies.”
The data, which was gathered by Google’s News Lab team and tweeted Wednesday by @GoogleTrends, was part of a map listing the top results for “how to spell” searches conducted in each state.
Rhode Island is one of seven states whose top search was for a word between one and five letters. The others were Georgia (gray), Idaho (quote), Mississippi (nanny), North Carolina (angel), Oregon (sense) and Tennessee (chaos).
Residents of Massachusetts looked to the online search engine most frequently for the spelling of “license.”
The majority, 39 states and Washington, D.C., turned to Google for the correct spelling of 6- to 10-letter words. Two states, Texas and Missouri, fell into the 11- to 19-letter word category for their searches of “maintenance.”
Connecticut and West Virginia rounded out the 50 states for their search of the 20-plus letter word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Additional @GoogleTrends tweets explained the data illustrated in the map reflects U.S.-based “how to spell” searches on Google between January 1 and April 30, 2017. The map was published in celebration of national spelling bee week.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey.
