The words looked up each year at Thanksgiving don't reflect the latest news—they show what kind of research is being done as the holiday approaches. Cornucopia, a traditional symbol of Thanksgiving, is now in our top lookups.
In its original and iconic meaning, a cornucopia is "a curved goat's horn overflowing with fruit and ears of grain that is used as a decorative motif emblematic of abundance."
It has also come to mean "abundance" in a more general sense, as in this headline in the Detroit Free Press: "Metro Detroit chefs present a cornucopia of recipes for Thanksgiving."
The symbol of the cornucopia comes from a Greek legend in which the nymph Amalthea nurtured the baby Zeus with the milk of a goat. The horn of her goat came to represent abundance in art, architecture, and design. Cornucopia comes from the Latin words meaning "horn of plenty" (and "copia" is also the root of the English word copious).
Other words looked up during the week of Thanksgiving include pilgrim, American Indian, hors d'oeuvre, thankful, and Thanksgiving itself.