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CARMEN'S CORNER: Let’s add Palinistic to the Dictionary
- By Carmen Watkins
- Published 07/14/2009
- Editorial and Opinion
- Unrated
Carmen Watkins
Carmen Watkins is president and CEO of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Houston.
View all articles by Carmen Watkins
In the same week that Sarah Palin announced that she would not seek a second term and then shocked Alaskaians by announcing that she will not complete the remaining 18 months of her current term as governor, Merriam Webster Inc. added more than 100 new words to the latest edition of its Collegiate Dictionary. For many people there may not be a clear correlation, but as I scoured the list, which quite often fascinates me, I secretly kept looking for the word Palin, Palinism or Sarahnistic. After all there was “acai,” a word commonly associated with the latest diet craze or healthy option.
It’s a small dark purple fleshy berrylike fruit from tropical Central and South America, which has recently been found to cure or assist in the healing of most ills, if you can believe all that you read. And it’s hard to have a business conversation without the phrase, “carbon footprint,” being injected at least once by those who think they know everything about business. It’s used to describe, the negative impact that something (as a person or business) has on the environment; specifically: the amount of carbon emitted by something during a given period.
“Earmark” is a provision in Congressional legislation that allocates a specified amount of money for a specific project, program, or organization was just included, although its has been around for centuries. We all know this word. It was popularized by the last election cycle and I am sure that next year, it will be included in the definition of “pork.” And every so often, the dictionaries will include a word or phrase that is so common in “pop culture” that it just has to be included. Often the word has no significance in grammatical base, forgetting everything that we learned about root word association and origin. This year’s word is a beauty, “frenemy,” one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy.
And this word may have been included just in time, because now, I hear that Sarah Palin will be the headlining campaigner for Gov. Rick Perry in his bid to be re-elected. Perry might want to have one more conversation with Sen. John McCain to help him figure out how this this new word might be important.
There have been previous ‘Palin’ entries found in less scholarly reference material. The definitions found in the Urban Dictionary, for the most part have been unflattering. Oscar Wilde said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” And we must admit that we have all adopted a new way of listening, comprehending and communicating the art, that has become Sarah Palin who must be folklore.
Carmen
It’s a small dark purple fleshy berrylike fruit from tropical Central and South America, which has recently been found to cure or assist in the healing of most ills, if you can believe all that you read. And it’s hard to have a business conversation without the phrase, “carbon footprint,” being injected at least once by those who think they know everything about business. It’s used to describe, the negative impact that something (as a person or business) has on the environment; specifically: the amount of carbon emitted by something during a given period.
“Earmark” is a provision in Congressional legislation that allocates a specified amount of money for a specific project, program, or organization was just included, although its has been around for centuries. We all know this word. It was popularized by the last election cycle and I am sure that next year, it will be included in the definition of “pork.” And every so often, the dictionaries will include a word or phrase that is so common in “pop culture” that it just has to be included. Often the word has no significance in grammatical base, forgetting everything that we learned about root word association and origin. This year’s word is a beauty, “frenemy,” one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy.
And this word may have been included just in time, because now, I hear that Sarah Palin will be the headlining campaigner for Gov. Rick Perry in his bid to be re-elected. Perry might want to have one more conversation with Sen. John McCain to help him figure out how this this new word might be important.
There have been previous ‘Palin’ entries found in less scholarly reference material. The definitions found in the Urban Dictionary, for the most part have been unflattering. Oscar Wilde said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” And we must admit that we have all adopted a new way of listening, comprehending and communicating the art, that has become Sarah Palin who must be folklore.
Carmen