{"id":425955,"date":"2026-02-14T21:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T21:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/425955\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T21:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T21:00:11","slug":"presidential-words-for-presidents-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/425955\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Words for Presidents Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

From George Washington\u2019s first presidential \u201cadministration\u201d to Donald Trump\u2019s promises to cut taxes \u201cbigly,\u201d U.S. presidents have played a big role in shaping the direction of the country, including the words we use to talk about everything from national politics<\/a> to everyday objects and actions.<\/p>\n

Words From Washington\u2014The Person and the Place<\/p>\n

George Washington was not just the first U.S. president. He was also the first to use the term \u201cadministration\u201d to apply to a president\u2019s term in office, and an early user of the more pedestrian word \u201cindoors.\u201d<\/p>\n

An even more prolific inventor of new words was Thomas Jefferson; he\u2019s credited with more than a hundred new terms, including \u201celectioneering,\u201d \u201cindecipherable,\u201d \u201codometer,\u201d and \u201cbelittle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Presidents also left an enduring mark: John Adams gave us \u201ccaucus\u201d; from John Quincy Adams we get \u201cgag rule\u201d; and from Zachary Taylor we have \u201cFirst Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the term \u201cfounding father\u201d itself was coined by a president, though it was Warren G. Harding, in the early 1920s, not one of the founding fathers. Harding, a prolific talker, also popularized the word \u201cbloviate\u201d and introduced us to \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorful Words and Memorable Sayings<\/p>\n

One of the more colorful inventors of new vocabulary was Theodore Roosevelt. He\u2019s responsible for spreading words and phrases like \u201cmuckraker,\u201d \u201cpack rat,\u201d \u201cloose cannon,\u201d \u201cbully<\/a> pulpit,\u201d and \u201cmollycoddle.\u201d He also coined \u201clunatic fringe,\u201d a word that refers to members of a political or social group with extreme, some would say crazy, views.<\/p>\n

Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt also gave us sayings that stick with us, like his famous \u201cspeak softly and carry a big stick.\u201d Harry S. Truman gave us \u201cthe buck stops here,\u201d likely derived from poker (where a buck knife was passed to the next player to deal). He also popularized another phrase, this time from a more domestic sphere: \u201cIf you can\u2019t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Are Words Invented?<\/p>\n

Quite fittingly, one of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s new words was \u201cneologize,\u201d which describes the process of creating new words, or \u201cneologisms.\u201d A number of presidents have been neologists\u2014or coiners of new words\u2014over the years.<\/p>\n

Sometimes new words are invented entirely, like the word at the end of President Trump<\/a>\u2019s infamous tweet of 2017: \u201cDespite the constant negative press covfefe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some interpreted \u201ccovfefe\u201d as a typo, a mangled version of \u201ccoverage.\u201d Trump himself jokingly hinted at a more mysterious meaning when he tweeted: \u201cWho can figure out the true meaning of \u2018covfefe\u2019???\u201d To this day, even linguists, experts in dissecting language meaning, still can\u2019t determine the origins of this puzzling presidential neologism!<\/p>\n

But usually when we make new words, we don\u2019t do it out of whole cloth. Instead, we combine existing words or parts of words in new ways. Jefferson made \u201cbelittle\u201d by adding the prefix \u201cbe,\u201d meaning \u201cto make\u201d or \u201cto cause,\u201d to the word \u201clittle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two hundred years later, George W. Bush used the same process, adding prefixes and suffixes to familiar words in unfamiliar ways, to come up with words like \u201cmisunderestimate\u201d and \u201cembetterment\u201d\u2014linguistic innovations whose contribution to the \u201cembetterment\u201d of the English language is still up for debate.<\/p>\n

Words We Love to Hate<\/p>\n

Another way we get new words is to change up their part of speech, for example, changing nouns into verbs or verbs into nouns. This is how we got \u201cneologize,\u201d which comes from the noun \u201cneologism,\u201d and also the word \u201cfinalize,\u201d a verb coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower out of the adjective \u201cfinal.\u201d<\/p>\n

This process is still at work today and is responsible for a lot of words people love to hate, including terms like \u201cactioning,\u201d \u201cdialoging,\u201d \u201conboarding,\u201d and \u201cadulting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracing Word Origins<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very difficult to trace a word\u2019s origins or to definitively pinpoint who used it first. Or, to borrow another of Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s phrases, pinning down word origins is like \u201cnailing jelly to a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likely, some of the new words attributed to U.S. presidents weren\u2019t actually invented by them but instead simply gained new prominence through being used by prominent people.<\/p>\n

Negative Press for Presidential Neologisms<\/p>\n

But this doesn\u2019t mean that people always embrace presidential lexical innovations. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose linguistic legacy includes the impactful term \u201cmilitary-industrial complex,\u201d was derided for the seemingly innocuous \u201cfinalize\u201d; FDR was criticized for using the now-common word \u201ciffy.\u201d President Lincoln was deemed too casual for using the word \u201csugar-coated\u201d in a message to Congress, and even the great neologizer Jefferson took a lot of heat for \u201cbelittle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re still uncomfortable with presidential neologisms. \u201cCovfefe\u201d caused a kerfuffle; Trump himself claimed he didn\u2019t say \u201cbigly\u201d but rather \u201cbig league\u201d; and it\u2019s impossible to misunderestimate how impressed people were with George W. Bush\u2019s wordsmithing abilities\u2014still put forth today as an example of how not to speak presidentially.<\/p>\n

Enduring Resistance to Language Change<\/p>\n

Such sentiments demonstrate that, as fond as people are of making up new words\u2014and of spreading them when their leaders promote them\u2014there\u2019s just something about language change that leaves us squeamish. Or rather, to use a word coined by John Adams way back at the turn of the 19th century, listening to U.S. presidents coin new words always seems to give us just a touch of \u201cqualminess.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From George Washington\u2019s first presidential \u201cadministration\u201d to Donald Trump\u2019s promises to cut taxes \u201cbigly,\u201d U.S. presidents have played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-425955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}