To coin a word or drop a clanger, that is the question

On misusing or fumbling a word, is it better to hold your hands up to it or to compare yourself to the world’s greatest playwright?

For Sarah Palin, apparently, the answer was easy. Her use of the entirely made up ‘refudiate’ was no error; indeed, inventing it was akin to something Shakespeare himself would have done (oh, when will the comparisons between those two end?). Last Sunday, in response to proposed plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero in New York, Palin begged ‘peaceful Muslims, please refudiate’ in a Tweet. While the message was later deleted, she eventually followed it up with one declaring, ‘Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!’

Of course, this ‘new word’, judged by those with dictionaries to be an accidental combination of ‘refute’ (meaning to prove to be false) and ‘repudiate’ (to reject as having no authority), still wouldn’t quite work in this context, if at all.

More appropriately, perhaps, Palin also aligned herself with George ‘Malaprop’ Bush, the ‘misunderestimated’ president who was ‘mindful not only of preserving executive powers for [him]self, but for predecessors as well.’

The English language always has and always will grow and change. But the question now is: should we all refudiate words entering the language out of sheer unwillingness to admit we got it wrong?

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Author: Catie Holdridge

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Catie joined Emphasis with an English literature and creative writing degree and a keen interest in what makes language work. Having researched, written, commissioned and edited dozens of articles for the Emphasis blog, she now knows more about the intricacies of effective professional writing than she ever thought possible.

She produced and co-wrote our online training programme, The Complete Business Writer, and these days oversees all the Emphasis marketing efforts. And she keeps office repartee at a suitably literary level.