The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced the 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate. The coinage, a conflation “repudiate” and “refute,” was used by former Temp-Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin to inflame religious intolerance and defend race hatred. Mrs. Palin, a scholarly former sportscaster who attended five colleges, one of them twice, used the word intentionally, first on the Sean Hannity Show and then in a famous tweet.
So the word will enter the dictionary, ensuring Sarah Palin’s immortality amongst speakers of God’s own language, American English, right? Wrong. Despite headlines bouncing around the blogosphere, the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary clearly refudiate the word as an entry in their reference book.
The 2010 Word of the Year in the Philippines is Jejemon. It means (roughly) “txt monster,” a hipster who uses many abbreviations and shortcuts when sending SMS text messages. OMG.
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Tags: "Tea Party", hate mongering, hatemongering, Islamopgobia, Palin, racism, Refudiate, Sarah Palin, Word of the Year, xenophobia
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