Weekend Update with Seth Myers
"This week the new Oxford American Dictionary named Sarah Palin's 'refudiate,' a word she first used on Twitter, word of the year. Which brings us to a segment called 'Come on, dictionary.' Come on, dictionary. Shouldn't the word of the year be better than Sarah Palin's accidental mash-up of refute and repudiate? And we know it was an accident because Palin herself went back and changed the Tweet to say refute. Yet then went back again to Twitter and defended herself, writing, 'Shakespeare liked to coin new words, too. Got to celebrate it.' Well there are a couple of differences between Shakespeare and Sarah Palin. For one, when Shakespeare coined new words it wasn't by accident. He came up with words like submerge and sneak. He didn't just take two words that kind of mean the same thing and then smash them together to make a third word that also kind of means the same thing. If you're going to make a word from two words, have it mean a new thing. For example, gynosaur. That's a gynecologist dinosaur. Irrespoonsible. That's when you play fast and loose with a spoon. And lumberjerk: the cashier who overcharges you at Home Depot (see also, woodscrooge). Shakespeare crafted new words; Sarah Palin got into a word fender bender. And when Shakespeare did come up with new words, he certainly didn't say 'Got to celebrate it.' In fact, I bet he never said that. 'Shakespeare, what are you doing at the club?' 'Just finished Twelfth Night, got to celebrate it.' Finally, we don't need refudiate because we already have repudiate. You can't just change the 'p' in a word to an 'f' and then say you made a new word. If it's that easy, then I just came up with one. Here, I'll use it in a sentence: New Oxford American Dictionary, please stop rafing the English language."
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