Don't make me fail to refudiate Seth Myers, Oxford

The Oxford American Dictionary made its word of the year Sarah Palin's typographical error "refudiate".

That was mocked during Weekend Update this past Saturday in a piece Seth Myers called "Come On, Dictionary". He duly noted how risible it was at the time of creation even Palin admitted it was a flubbed amalgamation of "refute" and "repudiate" but later she pulled the best way to cover a mistake: claim it was clever, like how Shakespeare came up with new words. However, comparisons to the Bard aside, and faux pas or not, as Myers stated in his quasi-rant, to take two words that not only start the same but mean similar things and switch one of the letters in the one with one of the letters in the other to make a new third word that means essentially the same as the first two did does not make for a worthwhile addition to the lexicon.

But that's not what this is about.

The worst part of this is not merely the obvious kowtowing by the dictionary's editors to jump on the political figure's bandwagon but that it made me have to concede something Seth Myers did was actually pretty good.

That's almost inexcusable.

I'm inclined to make a declaration: It's time to refudiate dictionaries.



~


Yes, we watch SNL despite the host of WU (and head writer). We're often not entirely sure why.