The Tweet heard round the world.
One of the most mocked Twitter blunders of the year just got a boost in prestige.
The New Oxford American Dictionary has named “refudiate” the Word of the Year, an honor that the Facebook term “unfriend” took home last year.
Sarah Palin coined/made up the word when she tweeted that she wanted “peaceful Muslims” to challenge the “Ground Zero Mosque.” It was commonly agreed that Palin was mixing the words “refute” and “repudiate” to create the never-before-heard term.
(See photos from Palin’s new reality show.)
According to the New York Times Bits blog, “nominations for the award are based on a number of criteria, including the amount of attention the word has received over the previous year and whether its usage has grown.”
(Will Sarah Palin be TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year?)
So not only do we have Palin to thank for this new word, but she has everyone who mocked her to thank for giving her new word such attention.