1. To flub, fail or otherwise stumble in response to simple, predictable questions in an interview; to give an off-topic and incoherent or syntactically suspect response to a simple, predictable question in an interview; to do likewise in any other human endeavor. 2. To fabricate an untruth, that is easily verifiable as such, in response to a question for which one does not know the answer.'Suspect syntax' aside, I might have imagined a more general meaning, like 'to fail in the most public and spectacular way conceivable', but that chapter probably hasn't been written yet. Maybe that's going to be 3.?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Verbing, Palin edition
Go to palined.com to see the campaign to make Sarah Palin's last name a verb. Here's the proposed definition:
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7 comments:
Nah, this won't make it as a verb. And I certainly hope she is quickly forgotten on the national scene.
With luck, by next year we will again think of Michael when we hear this surname...
YES!!!
There is much to be gained by having a short memory with regards to this woman, however, what does it mean to be "mccained"? How do you "mccain" someone? Lastly, what exactly is someone doing when they are "maccaining"? Here is an example: so and so ran for office, they ran a successful/unsuccessful mccain.
Of course, verbing these names has violent connotations: 'to (im)pale' and 'to cane'. (The latter as in Mencken's line "he sat in a professor's chair and caned sophomores for blowing spitballs."
Obama's much luckier, as in yesterday's NPR story about New Mexico voters, Spanish speakers, were saying things like Obamanos.
For many moderate conservatives, to be mccained is to be garden-pathed, as in
The candidate ran for finance reform blew it.
Mr. Verb,
Sadly, the violent connotations seem fitting. Given Palin's lynch-mob-inciting rhetoric, perhaps IMPALINATE (im as in 'not') will come to mean, "to use pointed language to incite violence against an opponent in a manner that backfires."
Just a thought,
Qohelet
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