On July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin offered her opinion and used the word “refudiate” (not a defined word) in a Twitter post. The media world and “twittersphere” (also not a word), immediately came alive and jumped on her use of the undefined word. Now, she may have meant to use “repudiate” but she didn’t, and being a notable public figure, she was lined up for target practice.
Of course, it might have been a typo (except ‘p’ and ‘f’ are distant and hit by different hands or fingers on the keypad), but instead of saying “oops,” she mounted a defense. She responded by saying that English is a living language, and even Shakespeare liked to coin words.
In truth, English is indeed a living language. During the lifetime of Shakespeare, English was rapidly absorbing new words (about 30,000) from abroad due to war, exploration, colonization, and modification of Latin, Greek and Romance languages. It caused the evolution of Middle English (e.g. Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales) to Early Modern English, the language of the Renaissance.
Shakespeare used around 3,000 new words in his works, introducing phrases and vocabulary that made the English language more expressive and colorful. The popularity of his works helped to standardize the language usage.
Well after Americans were forming their own culture, Noah Webster tried to standardize American speech as one language from the many spoken and written in different parts of the country.
His first American dictionary contained seventy thousand words, and standardized American spelling. By 1934, the Webster’s Second International Dictionary contained more than half a million words.
Today, English is the most widely spoken language in the world, still growing with the combination of words into new words (e.g. email, greenhouse) and adding prefixes and suffixes. With a million words at their disposal, an average person knows about 20,000 words but only uses about 2,000 on a regular basis.
Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, tries to keep track of words entering the English language. His software regularly checks 5,000 websites, news articles and scholarly publications. New words must make at least 25,000 appearances, make sense in at least 60 percent of the world and to different communities of people.
The language experts at Merriam-Webster rely on word usage to determine entry into their dictionary. Their editors constantly scour a wide variety of reading material, both electronic and in print in search of new words, variant spellings and new uses of existing words. The word and surrounding context is cited and stored both electronically and on paper. New words are added based on the number of citations from a wide variety of publications over a considerable time period.
The Fourth Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, the official reference for recreational and school play, endorsed by the National Scrabble Association, contains more than 4,000 new words. Examples are: za: a pizza; zine: a magazine; jazzbo: a devotee of jazz (Urban dictionary only).
So what should be done about Sarah Palin’s new word, a combination of refuse (to decline to accept) or refute (prove (a person) to be in error) and repudiate (disavow, renounce, discard, disclaim)?
The context will tell. “Ground Zero Mosque supporters… Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”
Or will it?
When I read the now deleted tweet (a short message posted on the Twitter website), I am confused. The tweet seems directed at peaceful muslims who are ground zero mosque supporters. It asks them to decline (?) or prove someone in error (?) and renounce (?) the issue. The simple word might have been “refuse.”
The message here to writers is to be careful with words used in our articles. If the words are not definable, or miss the mark of what we are trying to say, or confuse the point, it is very possible the message and our reputation for accuracy will be discounted as well.
As far as what should be done with “refudiate” I personally think, like most potentially new words, it should be left to swim or sink on its own.
