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Oxford Dictionary adds Sarah Palin's "Refudiate" to its dictionary

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T

TacticalFox88

Banned
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/palins-refudiate-makes-it-to-oxford-dictionary/711981/

"Refudiate", a word coined by glamorous US politician Sarah Palin, has been named 2010's 'Word of the Year' by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

46-year-old Palin introduced the term into US lexicon last July when she used it in a tweet about a proposed Islamic cultural centre near World Trade Center site in New York city. "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate," the former Alaskan governor posted on Twitter.

The message was removed from her Twitter page shortly after its posting, but Palin defended her usage of "refudiate" in another Tweet: "'Refudiate', 'misunderestimate', 'wee-wee'd up'. English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

And, now the Oxford University Press has defined the word refudiate as a verb "used loosely to mean 'reject'."

Its blog says: "From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate', we've concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject'."

It may be mentioned that according to the 'Huffington Post', the term became one of the most-searched words on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary over the summer. It was also named number four top word of 2010 by Global Language Monitor
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Sorry if old, but WOW. :lol :lol :lol
 
S

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
If we would just ignore her she would shrivel up and return to the bowels of hell she came from.
 
E

elrechazado

Banned
perfectly cromulent word, wtf is wrong with you people.

seriously though, it's an interesting word, I love its etymology.

edit: beaten by 1 second!
 
P

panda21

Member
well actually, no, it hasn't.

http://twitter.com/#!/OUPblogUSA/status/4260447272304642
@OUPblogUSA
Lauren
"Refudiate" hasn't been added to the New Oxford American Dictionary, it is just the Word of the Year. #woty
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news reporting fail. well more like thread title fail actually.
 
R

Roche

Member
Does her computer or whatever not have a spell check? Jeez, the least she could have done is ask one of her supporters to have a quick look over the spelling, what an absolute idiot.
 
I

iiiiiunicorn

Neo Member
It's happening...

idiocracy1.jpg
 
M

MIMIC

Banned
The message was removed from her Twitter page shortly after its posting, but Palin defended her usage of "refudiate" in another Tweet: "'Refudiate', 'misunderestimate', 'wee-wee'd up'. English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"
Click to expand...

255qhj5.jpg
 
B

Belfast

Member
siddx said:
If we would just ignore her she would shrivel up and return to the bowels of hell she came from.
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No, she wouldn't. Because there are plenty of people out there who, unfortunately, *love* her.
 
J

JGS

Banned
George Bush was robbed.

So Palin was right about inflation and smart enough to create a word. Democrats should be worried...
 
J

jdub03

Member
I'm currently taking an etymology class so this absolutely fascinates me. I never understood why language should be restricted to approved words only. Shakespeare created tons of words similar in form to this one. I think the more words we have the better. Language should be able to expand without limit so that we are perfectly able to express ourselves in a multitude of ways.

Edit: Ha ha, I wouldn't liken her at all to Shakespeare, but I would gladly say the creation of words by adding mixing various affixes to words is perfectly fine to me. I say we all follow in his footsteps.


http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
 
M

Mudkips

Banned
jdub03 said:
I'm currently taking an etymology class so this absolutely fascinates me. I never understood why language should be restricted to approved words only. Shakespeare created tons of words similar in form to this one. I think the more words we have the better. Language should be able to expand without limit so that we are perfectly able to express ourselves in a multitude of ways.
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If you have more words, you only have more words that people don't know the meaning of.
If you want to express yourself using flowery language, we have plenty of existing words that are nothing but synonyms of other words, differing only in name.

Excess lexemes is indeed a bad thing. The introduction of "flammable" by some shithead resulted in a bunch of problems. We already had the perfectly acceptable, (and correct) inflammable and non-inflammable.
 
I

ianp622

Member
jdub03 said:
I'm currently taking an etymology class so this absolutely fascinates me. I never understood why language should be restricted to approved words only. Shakespeare created tons of words similar in form to this one. I think the more words we have the better. Language should be able to expand without limit so that we are perfectly able to express ourselves in a multitude of ways.

Edit: Ha ha, I wouldn't liken her at all to Shakespeare, but I would gladly say the creation of words by adding mixing various affixes to words is perfectly fine to me. I say we all follow in his footsteps.


http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
Click to expand...

Do we really want Sarah Palin to be at the head of our new etymological frontiers?
 
J

jdub03

Member
Mudkips said:
If you have more words, you only have more words that people don't know the meaning of.
If you want to express yourself using flowery language, we have plenty of existing words that are nothing but synonyms of other words, differing only in name.

Excess lexemes is indeed a bad thing. The introduction of "flammable" by some shithead resulted in a bunch of problems. We already had the perfectly acceptable, (and correct) inflammable and non-inflammable.
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Your example to me does not cause confusion at all. Those who would be perplexed by these words are not the ones who would use them anyway. An excess of lexemes is not the cause of peoples misunderstanding. I wouldn't postulate that we have too many variations of clothing. I'd just recognize that each one has use in a different situation. They allow a person to be more flexible in what they want to do. Of course every word won't be used. I might like to use inflammable. You might like the length of the word non-inflammable. Jim might like the ease at which flammable roles off the tongue. I like options is all I'm saying. The ability to cut down on redundancy is also a plus(especially in literature).
 
P

polyh3dron

Banned
I nominate to add "ur" to the dictionary as a substitute for both "your" and "you're". I also nominate to officially make "Your" and "You're" interchangeable.
 
O

Opiate

Member
jdub03 said:
Your example to me does not cause confusion at all. Those who would be perplexed by these words are not the ones who would use them anyway. An excess of lexemes is not the cause of peoples misunderstanding. I wouldn't postulate that we have too many variations of clothing. I'd just recognize that each one has use in a different situation. They allow a person to be more flexible in what they want to do. Of course every word won't be used. I might like to use inflammable. You might like the length of the word non-inflammable. Jim might like the ease at which flammable roles off the tongue. I like options is all I'm saying. The ability to cut down on redundancy is also a plus(especially in literature).
Click to expand...

I think the issue is that, unlike clothing or other objects which we can vary, words have two parties: those who speak them and the receiver who must understand them. With clothing, the only relevant party is the person wearing it.

Because I must interpret words (in fact, interpretation is their only purpose), it is not rational to have everyone coin their own words ad infinitum. Rather quickly, we'd all be speaking our own, individual languages, which doesn't do us much good when we actually need to communicate. Communication would be slow or would break down altogether.

But you are correct that language should not be absolutely rigid and firm, either. Times change, and language should evolve along them. I am not, therefore, suggesting that we refuse to coin any diction: I am suggesting that we need to find some balance, and that an infinite variation of words would be profoundly deleterious to the actual function of words, communication.

To that end, I propose that words like "refudiate" are not the types of words we have reason to add. If we only want to add a small, focused set of words which explain new phenomena or ideas (which should be desirable, as communication is simpler), then adding a word that simply means "repudiate" except spelled wrong does very little more than confuse people and add another word to the dictionary.
 
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