So that’s what it’s called, “infosnacking.” I was surfing the net this morning researching the Dunkin’ Donuts deal when I got sidetracked by a long menu of tasty topics at flakmagazine; deep fried candy bars, Cinnabons, and so on.

“Infosnacking” is Webster’s Word of the Year; it means goofing off at the computer, whether you’re IMing friends, browsing eBay, or posting a comment to Kos when you’re s’posed to be working. You can hear about it on this NPR podcast, and, oh, BTW, the New Oxford American Dictionary has declared “podcast” to be the Word of the Year.

But wait! The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, not to be confused with plain old Webster’s, has its own Word of the Year, determined by the most looked-up words online. This year, the winner is “integrity.”

Why integrity? Today’s Arizona Republic speculates that the spate of ethical lapses we witnessed this year got people wondering just what integrity means, these days. Apparently a dictionary is one of the few places you can be sure to find it.

Merriam-Webster compiles an annual list of the Top Ten online lookups, and this year’s reads like a litany of sorrow and stupidity. I’d be hard-pressed to say, off the top of my head, what the highlights of 2005 were, but clearly some of the low points were on people’s minds: Katrina, birdflu, the tsunami, and the epidemic of government and corporate corruption.

Thankfully, Merriam-Webster also gives us the antidote to that list of downers with the far more entertaining Top Ten Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary). Plus, it turns out that Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day for December 13 is “glogg,” the popular Scandinavian Christmas drink.

If I blog about glogg, and share a recipe, maybe I won’t be guilty of infosnacking. Incidentally, if you’re wondering what last year’s Word of the Year was, according to Merriam-Webster, it was “blog.”