The season of dubious annual honors is upon us, and blogs will soon be clogged with top-ten lists of the best and worst of the year: 3-D movies, iPhone apps, sports scandals, celebrity tweets, episodes of Glee, and (inevitably) doomsday scenarios.
Exercises in silliness? Of course. Shameless marketing schemes meant to stir up heated, meaningless debates? Definitely. Far too trivial for us to bother with? Well, sure--that is, unless the schemes have something to do with the English language.
For that reason alone I feel compelled to pass along the news that last week the editors of The New Oxford American Dictionary announced--without a hint of embarrassment--that Oxford's Word of the Year for 2010 is . . . refudiate:
refudiate verb used loosely to mean "reject": she called on them to refudiate the proposal to build a mosque.According to the OUP Blog, "the word refudiate instantly evokes the name of Sarah Palin, who tweeted her way into a flurry of media activity when she used the word in certain statements posted on Twitter. . . . [W]e have 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.'"
[origin--blend of refute and repudiate]
Though refudiate may be considered a stunt word, it's not a true neologism. As editor Ben Zimmer pointed out last July in the Visual Thesaurus, the word has appeared in various contexts since popping up in an Atlanta Constitution headline in 1925 ("Scandal Taint Refudiated In Teapot Case by Court").
Still, refudiate remains a novelty item, and as Ammon Shea has observed, it's not guaranteed a spot in the Oxford American Dictionary. "Dictionaries," he says, "typically do not include words that exist only because they are mistakes (unless the mistake becomes widespread enough that it enters the language)."
If you choose to refudiate refudiate, feel free to dip into Oxford's list of runners-up and pick an alternative nonce word or portmanteau:
- bankster: a member of the banking industry perceived as a predator that grows rich at the expense of those suffering in a crumbling economy.
- gleek: a fan of the television series Glee.
- retweet: repost or forward (a message posted by another user).
- nom nom: an expression of delight when eating.
And stay tuned: in a few days Merriam-Webster will be announcing its word of the year. Until then, we'll try to bridle our cynicism.
More Words About Words:Image: The New Oxford American Dictionary, third edition (Oxford University Press, USA, 2010)
Comments
How does “refudiate” differ from “repudiate?
Being a French-Canadian,and extremely proud of the beauty and soft sounding language that is French and always being told that French-Canadians don’t speak French because it does not have a Parisian accent, I delved into the learning of the English language and may I be so bold as to say that the English language has me, to say the least, baffled. I just can’t understand the use of inanimate items such as “chair,board,floor, bench, table and other such items to indicate a person speaking, their is no other language that I know of that is so ridiculous. All I can say is I speak French Canadian and I delight in correcting persons using terrible Enghish. Thanks for letting me vent this little frustation Gerry
Their is???
French speakers have been upset with English ever since it became the international “lingua Franca.” I can understand how they would try to discount the power and expressiveness and creativity of the English language.
Also, if you like to point out with delight the mistakes we English speakers make, how do you justify this inconsistency: “French-Canadian,” hyphenated and “French Canadian,” not hyphenated? Which is it Pierre??
SARAH PALON HAS NO AUTHORITY TO CHANGE MEANING OF ANY WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. SHE IS NO SCHOLAR, SO QUIT MAKING UP WORDS. STAY IN ALASKA, WE DO NOT NEED YOU