I’ll hand it to Donald J. Trump.
He has rewritten the way a lot of us use the English language. Ever since he burst onto the political scene, Americans have been treated to some fascinating uses by the president-elect of the primary language spoken in this great country.
I’ll offer three quick examples, although I’m sure y’all will have more:
Yuuuge: This means “huge.” Simple enough. The way Trump uses it, though, it has become something of a slang version of the simple word that comprises just four letters. Comedians use it while mimicking Trump. Pundits and, yes, bloggers such as yours truly, use it to make some kind of political point, which usually is to illustrate that what’s yuuuge really isn’t such a big deal.
Bigly: Trump introduced this as an adverb. He told he was going to “win bigly.” He said he’d “bring jobs back bigly.” To be fair, some grammarians have said it’s actually a word. I looked in my American Heritage dictionary. I couldn’t find it there. I pored through the many variations of the word “big,” but didn’t see a single reference to “bigly.” But … it’s a word now.
Unpresidented: This is the latest Trump linguistic phenomenon. He tweeted this one out to refer to something the Chinese did when they captured a U.S. submarine drone. It was “unpresidented,” Trump said. I’ll take a leap and presume he meant to write “unprecedented.” Then again, Trump is “like, I’m a smart person,” so many he tweeted it intending to introduce it to the English language.
Trump will be with us now — he hopes — for at least the next four years. He’ll be on the air, in print, tweeting his brains out with comments that might make us wonder what in the world this guy is saying.
He’ll be inventing more words along the way. Look at this way: He’ll be expanding everyone’s vocabulary.