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MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts, the network's personality who likened Mitt Romney to the KKK, said the made-up word refudiate on the network this morning. Of course, refudiate is not a real word. However, it gained recognition when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin used it in a tweet in June of 2010. MSNBC ridiculed Sarah Palin for weeks when she used the nonexistant word on Twitter in 2010.

The most astonishing thing about Sarah Palin’s career, since the conclusion of the 2008 presidential campaign, is how frequently the Left breaks itself to pieces against the sunny rocks of her good humor. The latest example is the website Gawker, which seems on the verge of being sued out of existence because they rushed to leak photocopied pages from her new book, America By Heart, before it was published. When Palin called them on it, Gawker ran a snotty response, complete with an unflattering photo of the former Governor, suggesting she try reading fair-use copyright laws. Mary Sue at the...

If there is something we learned this year, it’s that anything Palin tweets or writes on Facebook becomes international news and the talk of the nation, especially when it comes to politics.Two nights ago on his program, Lawrence O’Donnell decided to rant on New Oxford American Dictionary for their decision to include Sarah Palin’s word “refudiate” into the English language.Palin’s typo in a tweet about the Ground Zero mosque was the talk on twitter. Palin called it “Shakespearean.” The result: she popularized the word and it is now part of the lexicon. New Oxford wrote about their decision: An unquestionable...

Sarah Palin's usage/invention of the word "refudiate" in a Twitter message has again been referenced in a story in The New York Times. Setting aside the question of whether "refudiate" was the result of ignorance, an innocent typo, or whimsical invention, I'm wondering if Obama has ever made a similar gaffe concerning the spelling or meaning of a word. I know there was the "57 state" gaffe, the mispronunciation of "corpsman", the reference to the non-existent Austrian language, and so forth, but I'm curious about gaffes specifically involving word usage or spelling.

The premiere of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on cable television this week felt more like a formality than a new career direction. In any meaningful sense, Ms. Palin has starred in her own reality show since she left the governor’s office last year, functioning more as a cultural symbol than as a politician and earning a Hollywood-size fortune in the process. What made all this possible, when you think back to Ms. Palin’s debut as a national figure in 2008, wasn’t actually her recognizable identity as a scourge of liberal government and values, but rather her lack of a political identity...

The wild-eyed, conspiro-nuts of the far left have been waxing goofy over claims that there simply must be a vast right wing conspiracy because Palin moppet Bristol Palin continues to scoot by ad stay on the Dancing With the Stars show. Well, now I'd guess they have a new conspiracy to launch: the New Oxford American Dictionary has just named "refudiate" its word of the year. The left is all ready to call in Jesse Ventura and his TV crew of Conspiracy Theory on this one. After all, it must be a vast right-wing conspiracy if a real-life dictionary is...

Sarah Palin has officially changed the modern lexicon, one tweet at a time. While one might expect the New Oxford American Dictionary to refudiate the former Alaska governor’s favorite verb, today they embraced it, announcing “refudiate” as the official 2010 word of the year. "From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate,' we have concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject.' "the New Oxford American Dictionary said in a press release. Palin’s use of “refudiate,”...

To "refudiate" or not to "refudiate." Merriam-Webster has declared Sarah Palin's made-up verb its 2010 "Word of Summer." The respected publisher says the pseudo word is the one most-often searched by users of its online dictionary. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, used it twice in July, once on a news show and later in a Twitter posting where she called on peaceful Muslims to "refudiate" the plan to build a mosque near ground zero in Lower Manhattan. Palin deleted the non-word, replacing it with another tweet, saying "peaceful New Yorkers" should "refute the...

SPRINGFIELD — Merriam-Webster’s "Word of the Summer" is not even a word. That’s something no one can "refudiate." Sarah Palin’s attempt to splice "refute" and "repudiate" on a news show and in a Twitter message in July sparked more searches on the publisher’s online dictionary during the summer than most real words did. But don’t expect all the interest in "refudiate" to lead to an actual dictionary entry. The former Alaska governor has laughed off criticisms about her pseudo-word, noting that Shakespeare also coined new words. ’Refute’ and ’repudiate’ do have similar meanings. Refute means to prove something wrong or...

Our politicians give us new words:

Just before noon on Sunday, July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin enriched the English language. Referring to the planned Islamic center near the 9/11 site in New York, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” Presumably, Palin was wavering between “refute” and “repudiate,” and, in the heat of the tweeting moment, typed or BlackBerried or iPhoned or texted the new amalgam, “refudiate.” Pedants in the blogosphere got all huffy. Palin decided to double down. A few hours later, she follow-up-tweeted: “English is a living...

I’ve always felt that skill at articulating a persons thoughts meant more to members of the media who make their living using their verbal skills than it does to the rest of us who are usually more concerned with what people say than they are with how they say it. I remember when Dan Quayle was ridiculed by the national media for correcting a student's correct spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" at an elementary school spelling bee in Tiverton, New Jersey in 1992. He later wrote in his memoirs that it was spelled that way on the card the school...

I don't care much for Sarah Palin's politics, but I do like her word "refudiate." As I just typed the word, a squiggly red line appeared under it with a suggestion that I change the word to repudiate. Well, for the record, I repudiate that suggestion and refudiate it. People who don't like political figures often make fun of their language. H.L. Mencken said of a Warren G. Harding speech: "It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." Jimmy Carter's enemies portrayed him as a hick from the sticks, not just because of...

A few days ago Sarah Palin caused a quite stir in a couple of ways. One, she came out hard against the Cordoba House, the proposed mosque that radical Islamists want build at Ground Zero in New York City, which you can read about here. Sarah also created a stir when she asked the peaceful Muslims world wide to “refudiate” this mosque, thus creating a new word. Most people thought little of it, as they knew what she was talking about. Many of us figured she had simply combined a couple of words to create a cool new one. After...

The Washington Post's sweeping investigation into what it characterized as the inefficiencies of the country's intelligence agencies came out Monday, both in print and on the paper's Web site. But, at least for the better part of the day, the most read story on the paper's Web site dizzily revolved around another kind of intelligence: Sarah Palin's. "Palin Invents Word 'Refudiate,' Compares Herself to Shakespeare," read the headline. And it was entirely true, if not a little dramatic. Palin did say the nonexistent word "refudiate," and she also regurgitated it in a Twitter note she posted. She later shrugged off...

Yesterday, Sarah Palin offered her opinion on a proposal to build a mosque in the vicinity of the September 11th site. Her words: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” This tweet is a pundit’s dream, a perfect storm for mud-slinging, flak, fuss, hurrahs, miffs, polemics, rows, rumpuses, and maybe some discussion. Dictionary.com only cares about one word in the former Alaska governor’s message. Refudiate. Go ahead and look up refudiate on our site. Or any dictionary Web site for that matter. Nada, zilch. There...

"Refudiate” now number-two search term on Google Trends Just more proof that Sarah Palin is the single most influential and important woman in the world today, period.

While Tea Party talking head and former vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin prefers to speak in the “pro-America” (or predominantly conservative) parts of the country as she said at a North Carolina fundraiser, she still felt it was necessary for her to chime in on a local controversy in New York City. With her BlackBerry, Palin tweeted that New Yorkers and Muslims reject plans to build a Mosque and Muslim community center near Ground Zero, and she made a fool of herself in the process by inventing a new word – “refudiate.” “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you...