Being in the public eye definitely makes a person more vulnerable to criticism and ridicule. When it comes to politics, it’s even more pertinent. After all, politics is perhaps the most serious aspect of life, and so scrutiny directed towards its leaders and others talking about it is much higher.
Recently, Susan Sarandon called Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton “untrustable” on live television. Over a month before that, many thought Donald Trump said “bigly” during a live debate. Both sparked a wave of tweets from numerous people -- but those aren’t even real words!
By now, the record has been set straight: Donald Trump didn’t say bigly, he said big league, and even then, “bigly” is an actual word. It’s right there in the Merriam Webster dictionary. But even if it wasn’t, would it still be worth the ridicule? And what about “untrustable?”
The natural linguistic ability humans have is absolutely incredible, and something that people rarely take into account before attacking others on the basis of the language they use. Words like “bigly” and “untrustable” may not sound like real words or have an official place in the dictionary, but those who criticize others for using words such as that are completely overlooking something truly remarkable, and something only native speakers of a language can do naturally: create new words and have others immediately understand what they mean by it.
Take “bigly,” for instance. The word “big” mostly serves as an adjective. In the English language, the suffix ending -ly is typically added to the end of adjectives to form adverbs, which modify verbs and describe how an action is performed. So “win bigly” would be no different than saying “win largely” or “win hugely.” It sounds a bit odd because we use “big” by itself as an adverb too, but “bigly” is, in fact, correctly executing common English morphology.
So how about the word “untrustable?” After all, it’s not an official English word. The correct word would be “untrustworthy.”
Here’s the thing: the word untrustable, following morphology, could either mean the ability to be untrusted or the lack of ability to be trusted, but essentially boils down to a general meaning -- something that can’t be trusted. In this case, the word “untrustable” was created through an intrinsic knowledge of what derivational affixes have the ability to attach to an adjective and form a concept that other English speakers quickly decipher.
Forming words that “aren’t real” isn’t a lack of intelligence. It’s a brilliant display of how amazing our brains are at utilizing language. English speakers are definitely quite good at this, creating new words and phrases that the Oxford English Dictionary added more than 500 words and phrases two months ago at its third update of the year (and there’s still one more update scheduled updated in December).
It does no good to be against linguistic innovations. Language isn’t a set science. It grows with each speaker. The English we have in 2016 was different than the English we had in 1916 and even more so in 1516. Compare English today from English a thousand years ago and you’ll find that it’s an entirely different language. The proper English dictionaries you cling so desperately to are nothing more than books published by groups of people who think they have authority on verifying what’s real English and what isn’t, regardless of the fact that certain words and phrases and dialects are being spoken and recieved all across the globe. The only proof a language needs to be real is that it needs to have been spoken at one point in time. Other than than that, it’s all hot air (with a rather dark history that is heavily linked to racism and classism).
So before you go off again on someone using a word that isn’t in the dictionary, stop and think for a moment. Did you understand what they meant? If yes, there is absolutely nothing to be upset or self-righteous about.
