Presidential Prerogative

Normalcy through neology

Welcome to Off the Clock, the fortnightly Saturday edition of Timeless & Timely that’s a fun look at language and words, with a smattering of history. If someone forwarded this to you, make sure you join us:

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851 (public domain - Wikipedia)

We find ourselves in the midst of another presidential election season (have you noticed yet?), and with that comes the speechifying.

Candidates love to hear themselves talk.

And with all of the hot air emitted from campaigns, you may find oddities escaping from their oral cavities — phrases that are perhaps verbal gaffes, or if we’re lucky, are neologisms.

Neology is the practice of inventing new words. It doesn’t matter whether the invention was intentional or not; at times some of the best slip-ups have given us words that we then regularly use.

And presidents of the United States are a fine group to source from.

Paul Dickson does a masterful job of bringing us into the Oval Office-inspired lexicon of American English in Words From the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America’s Presidents.

Founding Fathers’ Fluency

Warren G. Harding gave us the term “Founding Fathers,” and that group acknowledged a responsibility that in the new government and country they were forming, they could also establish new words and phrases.

Writing to John Adams in 1820, Thomas Jefferson admitted,

“I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give a language copiousness and euphony.”

Jefferson was no stranger to new words, introducing terms such as lengthily, electioneering, belittle, indecipherable, monotonously, ottoman (the stool, not the empire), pedicure, the noun bid, and the verb neologize.

With Nate Bargatze returning to Saturday Night Live last weekend and providing a follow-up to his popular sketch “Washington’s Dream,” we again find the first president hyper-aware of the lexicological legacy he would leave for America.

Last season, Bargatze portrayed George Washington amid a camp of dejected Revolutionary War soldiers, inspired by a dream of a country that could choose its own system of weights and measures:

“I dream that one day, our proud nation will measure weights in pounds and two thousand pounds will be called a ton.”

When asked what a thousand pounds would be called, he replied, “Nothing. We have no word for that.”

The theme continued last weekend with Bargatze returning to the show as a host and taking part in a sketch called “Washington’s Dream Part 2,” where he imagined how we would “do our own thing with the English language”: 

“I dream that one day our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it a dozen.”

When asked what other numbers there will be words for, he responds,

“None. Only 12 shall have its own word, because we are freemen. And we will be free to spell some words two different ways.”

Specifying which words this could include, Bargatze suggests “donut” and the name “Jeff.” When he was asked about the alternate spellings of Jeff, he replied: “The short way with the J, and the stupid way with the G.”

Flubbed Phrases

Warren Harding was the first president to give an address via radio. And although his adoption of this new medium was laudable, he was known for being inarticulate. When he uttered normalcy instead of normality, the word and his reputation were solidified.

In promising a return to traditional American ideals, Harding referred to Americanism, admitting “It’s a damn good word to carry the election.”

Teddy Roosevelt was more certain of its meaning:

“Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood the virtues that made America.”

But Roosevelt also gave us much more common terms such as pack rat, muckraker, bully pulpit, loose cannon, lunatic fringe, and “malefactors of great wealth.”

Franklin Roosevelt rebranded the “Report to Congress” as the “State of the Union,” and in other matters thought that the Supreme Courts stance on something was iffy.

Dwight Eisenhower is well-known for coining the phrase “military-industrial complex,” but he also gets credit for verbifying final into finalize.

George W. Bush called himself “the decider” when referring to decision-making. But it is once again SNL that gets the last laugh when their Will Ferrell version of Bush first uttered the phrase strategery.

These men were leaders—not only in geopolitical terms, but in lexicographical terms. They often spoke extemporaneously and had to think quickly on their feet, employing their vocabulary and wit to deliver clever answers.

Whatever you do, don’t misunderstimate them.

There’s so much to learn,

Further reading

Words From the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America’s Presidents by Paul Dickson, Walker Books 2013.