Misunderestimated Education: Is our children learning?

The New Oxford American Dictionary today declared "refudiate" the top word in 2010 — a verb invented by Sarah Palin.

The former governor used the word in a Twitter message, calling on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" a planned mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York. When critics pounced on the made-up verb, Palin deleted the Tweet and replaced it revising it to ask Muslims to "refute" the Mosque— another nonsensical statement, since to refute is to prove something to be untrue. Repudiate would have been a more fitting application of the language seeing that it means to refuse to have anything to do with or to refuse to accept. Then to defend her poor vocabulary she sent another tweet comparing herself to Shakespeare, no less.

But in a release today, the New Oxford American Dictionary defended Palin's ignorant use of the word. "From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate,' we have concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject,' " the New Oxford American Dictionary said in a press release. Bullshit...we did not need a new word for reject. Learn the proper use of the existing language.

I would have voted for:

nom nom (informal) exclamation an expression of delight when eating.

pl. noun (nom noms) delicious food.

verb (nom-nom) eat delicious food with obvious enjoyment.
adjective (nom-nommy) descriptive of delicious food.
[origin — imitative; popularized by the noises made by the character Cookie Monster on Sesame Street (usually as “Om nom nom nom”)]