From the motivated-grammar blog,
online:
"Assuming that the mosque is the object, we can then be pretty sure that repudiate is the intended meaning, as you can’t refute a thing."
"Refuting is the act of disproving or rebutting or showing to be erroneous, which must be done to an argument, claim, belief, or something of the like."
"To refute a mosque would be, I suppose, to prove that it does not exist, in which case the whole tweet would become quite unnecessary."
"It isn’t a blend; it’s just a variant form of repudiate. Because she introduced the word in a domain already solidly ruled by another word, refudiate has no reason to catch on.And so, sadly, the meaning that people will think of for refudiate will not be the reasonable meaning that blends refutation and repudiation into a rebuttal-and-disavowal. Worse, because of Palin’s awkward attempt to justify it away, the word will be a laughingstock for the near future. This has poisoned what could have been a good word. But at least it gives us a cautionary tale. Refudiate coulda had class. It coulda been a contender. Instead, it’s the butt of a joke. If you have a pet word that you’ve been nurturing, and you want to see it find its way into the language, don’t introduce it as an identical replacement for an existing word. Don’t omit its context. And don’t ever treat it like a typo. Be proud of your word, thrust it into the light of day, make clear what exactly it means, and you’ll be the proud parent of a word."
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Yes, this sounds about right. Miss Palin should have probably mea culpa'd it, and said she misspelled repudiate. Anyway, as the writer notes refute usually means..prove wrong, thus involves an argument. Mosques aren't arguments (at least in ordinary sense of the word).
ReplyDeletePortmanteaus also seem to show ..meaning as use. Yr bugaboo! Yet with Carrollian jive not really common speech. Beware the Frumious Bandersnatch!! Sounds scary, but not really meaningful. One could if one had time perhaps compile a list of meaningful portmanteaus ("blog", itself). So they do enter speech, and probably offend some (I recall an essay..Safire?? a few years about how techie-speak was ruining the Queen's English. Not sure).
Podríamos hacer español el idioma oficial. ¡Ay! los hispanos no les gusta la jerga americana, tampoco.
Yes. She could have said, "I meant 'repudiate'. Someone was arguing that since 'pud' sounds like 'pudenda', she was avoiding a bad term and thus engaging in a euphemism.
ReplyDeleteShe did say, "I meant 'refute'", which confused some.
Finally, she allowed that she MEANT 'refudiate'.
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And the task is to grammarians, etc., to give a meaning.
She said that the mosque (or mosque plan) near Ground Zero should be 'refudiated' by New Yorkers. She added, 'please'. She said it was a stab in their hearts -- "as is in ours in the heartland".
Someone said that the whole utterance was slightly confusing. I shall see if I can find it.
While a mosque cannot indeed be 'refuted', it may be 'refudiated' -- i.e. what you 'refute' or 'rebut', or 'refuse', if you like, is the PLAN behind it. And why? Well, here is where the 'repudiate' bit of the blend comes in.
You refuse, rebut, or refute a proposal, because you repudiate it. In short, you refudiate it, please.