Current events influence public interest and drive Internet word searches. For over a decade, linguists and dictionary publishers have analyzed big data from Internet word searches to designate "Words of the Year" (WsOY). In this study, we examine how WsOY can foster critical digital literacy and illuminate essential aspects of inquiry and disciplinary thinking within social studies. We contend WsOY and online dictionaries are fertile ground for simultaneously supporting academic language development, digital literacy, critical historical literacy, comprehension, and disciplinary heuristics of social studies. WsOY also represent an exemplar of a kind of vocabulary study that can bolster situated cognition to actively engage learners with multi-genre content through disciplinary techniques. Delving into complex and layered word meanings through non-linear and generative word learning processes embedded in technology-mediated contexts naturally encourages situated word learning and models how disciplinary heuristics can be learned through word meaning development.