Now you too can 'Palinate' !

It sounds like an English word, but isn’t one, proclaimed one and all, when Sarah Palin uttered the hitherto unknown word “refudiate”.

Sarah promptly urged her followers on Twitter, to celebrate the formation of a new word, instead of mocking at her gaffe, pointing out how even William Shakespeare loved to coin new words thus.
“English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

One wonders how the world reacted when Shakespeare coined ‘lonely’ in a world that only recognised ‘alone’. They probably had been the well-known bard to do what he was best at – to coin new words. Here is a list of words coined by Shakespeare which are today part of every English speaker’s vocabulary.

The press instead compared her slip of the tongue to the recent Bushisms that we had been treated to not in the distant past. So Sarah was, in a sense ‘misunderestimated’ - to borrow George Bush’s coinage, another word having originated under similar circumstances. Since Bushisms cover a wide range of oral goof-ups, maybe we ought to have a new word for the phenomenon of creating a new word, unintentionally, lets dedicate it to Sarah Palin and call it

“Palinate - v. to palinate – to unintentionally create new words”

But then, we all do use words that don’t exist in the dictionary, knowingly or unknowingly. You may be aware of the vastly common word used by Indians – “prepone”, which incidentally does not exist! Now this word makes a lot of sense and ought to shake away its “non-word” tag to enter all dictionaries right-away. If putting of a meeting is postponed, advancing one ought to be preponed, what say?

While language critics have posted online messages rubbishing Palin’s comparing her coinage to that of Shakespeare, who coined words with distinctly different meaning, unlike her Freudian formation. So a word like ‘prepone’ not only score over refudiate, in that it conveys the intention and have a distinct logical meaning.

And while we used to always get invitations for events, we now begin getting an ‘invite’. “Didn’t you get my invite?” I am asked, to which I cannot resist the temptation to reply, “Anyway, I am busy and would have sent you my ‘refuse’, in any case!” If ‘my invite’ s OK, “my refuse” got to be OK, I guess!

Troubled by the question about “when does a word really become a word”, I had posed this question to the well-known Anu Garg, founder of “Wordsmith.org”, whom I had met during his visit to Mumbai.

A word, according to him becomes a word, the moment it is formed – there is no need for it to enter a dictionary, which it will eventually do if the word is in use reasonably frequently by well-known publications.

Lexicographers have their own standards for admitting words into their dictionaries, but they all need the word to be widely used. But celebrities appearing on media channels have a special charm – Sarah Palin’s word ‘refudiate’ made it to the online Urban Dictionary in a matter of days!

“Refudiate: A term used to indicate the underlying racism of the speaker. If you as a racist need another group to give up their culture you ask that group to refudiate their beliefs and culture. Users of this term reject the English language, facts, rationalism and black people.” Sarah Palin asked NY Muslims to "refudiate" their mosque near the 9/11 WTC site.

You can even print a T-shirt and have a mug with this creation on it here!

Writers are not so lucky, though. They’ve got to coin it and then even popularise it before their coinage is acknowledged and widely used for this purpose. Though I have been able to publish my own coined word, “predictament” – a predicament to predict - in my blog and my recent article in the Times of India, the word will need wider usage and more appearances, before it enters a dictionary. Do let me know if you find it in a dictionary you use!

Blogger’s Post-scripts:

1. 1. Sarah Palin’s popularity in India was soaring in late 2008, but was shocked to see a restaurant serve Palin Dosa! Read about it in my post “Palin Talk” here.

2. Regular readers of my blog would be aware of my penchant for new words. But for those of you who aren’t may want to read the following posts.

A million words.

Words of the Year 2008

Words of the Year 2009