Refudiate Hits The Jackpot

by Robert L. Gisel

 As the Sarah Palin foo-pah "refudiate" hit the big numbers on 19 July, 2010 it surprises me I only see it just now. Whether the word was errant, coined, portmanteau, or revivified, the word went so viral if it could have been put in a nuclear reactor it would have powered the city for weeks.

 Having put an essentially made-up word on Twitter it has now seen about every corner of the web. Whether it ever was a word or not scholastic acclaim guarantees its place in history.

 Merriam Webster pronounced it was not a word, but when it got so many hits recanted and declared it the word of the summer. The New Oxford American Dictionary made it the word of the year. Wikipedia cut to the chase and made it officially a word by listing it in its Wiktionary.

 It has been 4 months now and yet it pulls up as the "27th most popular search term in the past hour". A continuous uninterrupted run of listings on Sarah Palin's "refudiate" goes on for 77 pages of Google search, and that does not include the possible duplicates and similar postings. There is no competition for the word refudiate, still, the total listing of search items is 2,540,000.

 I'm just amazed at how viral one word can be when attributed to a well known personage.

I refudiate that.
I am refudiating it.

I will be refudiating it even more.

We refudiated it before.

It shall have been refudiated.

It is refudiable.

The refudity is plain.

There is so much refudiation going on.

Refuditory actions can be troublesome.

Politics is full of refudiocelatory action.

 Thank you Sarah Palin.

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