Words of the day: Empathy, prejudice

Today's confirmation hearing was filled with buzz words that have swarmed around the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.  The buzz winner? The word "empathy"  -- which President Barack Obama used to describe a quality he wanted in a justice -- was used 23 times, by both Democrats and Republicans.

As expected, there was plenty said about race, with words like "prejudice" and "bias" getting a lot of play. But there were some surprises -- Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice, has 12 references, beating the term "wise Latina" with four.

Empathy: 23
Prejudice: 22
Bias: 19
Modest: 16
Umpire: 11
Marshall (as in Thurgood) 12
Wise Latina: 4
Mainstream:  4
Baseball: 3
Firefighter: 3

-Beth Davidz, AP reporter, Washington