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Politics and Activism

A Debate Dictionary: Trump Edition

Because these candidates say some pretty weird things.

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A Debate Dictionary: Trump Edition
Slate

If you’re anything like me, you watched the debate on Monday night and thought the following few thoughts in your head: a) one of the two people up there is going to be the president next year, b) wow, politicians are dumb, and c) I really hope Hillary wins.

Welllllll....number three is completely opinion based. That aside, as I was watching the debate, I realized that the jargon of a certain someone speaking at the podium were nothing short of ineloquent. I have embarked on a journey, a journey to be an amateur translator of sorts for this person. as we could all use a handbook to reference the made-up words from the mind of Mr. Donald Trump.

bigly /big·ly/ adjective — describing the idea of being big

“I’m going to cut taxes bigly, and you’re going to raise taxes bigly, end of story.”

Bigly — which isn’t even a word in any online dictionary according to the first search page of Google — is one of Trump’s many mistakes in the Monday night debate. It’s a spin-off of the word “greatly” or “by a large margin” except has a juvenile ring to it. I could see my small cousin using the word bigly to describe something, not a seventy year old man that is running for the highest governmental position in the country. Except, Trump’s campaign seems to have that elementary school vibe, giving it a weak and disorganized sense.

He uses bigly as a determinator of how large Clinton’s raised taxes are going to cost Americans, comparing the number to how large his tax cuts are going to be (for those who are already wealthy and getting tax cuts). The use of bigly exemplifies two key points regarding Donald Trump and his candidacy: a) he doesn’t know what he’s doing in this race, and therefore he belongs back in kindergarten but also b) the word bigly implies that it is smaller than a word such as enormous, so he’s not insulting Clinton as much as he could.

Try adding bigly to your daily lexicon, especially if you’re in college. I hear that professors love to hear new vocabulary terms during lectures.

semi-exact /se·mi ex·act/ — not completely exact; only sometimes precise

Because the word exact means that you are precise and without error, adding the prefix semi- in front of it just defeats the purpose of using the word in the first place. Although I guess Trump is never without error, so semi-exact is the closest level of preciseness he will ever get near, so I’ll give him a break. The word, as many of his other key inventions on Monday night, went viral throughout the social media community.

The context in which he coined this term is the following sentence: “The Obama administration from the time they’ve come in is over two hundred thirty years worth of debt. And he’s topped it. He’s doubled it in a course of almost eight years— seven and a half years to be semi-exact.” Trump wants you to know that Obama still has half of a year left, and he could totally rake up more debt before he leaves the office. Trump cares about the little details, so he couldn’t have used the word “exact” because it hasn’t been exactly seven and a half years. Definitely a man with his heart set out for the details. Don’t worry if you didn’t catch this word in action, folks, because he’s always semi-exact about the words coming out of his mouth.

The next time you’re not sure what to put down on a test, start out with “I’m only semi-exact that this is the right answer, but…” Professors adore it.

braggadocious /brag·a·dō·cious/ — a spin off of the word “braggacdocio” which means arrogant

Yet another Trump term, but this time he actually used a word that is a true world (kind of). The word braggadocious is supposed to be a nineteenth century slang term that loosely translates to arrogant. We all know that Trump loves the nineteenth century, am I right?Apparently, however, it’s so seldom used that it doesn’t have a entry in the print or online editions of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

He used this term this past week to say that he didn’t want to sound “braggadocious as he talked about his wealth and business dealings.” Thanks for the warning, Trump, but you did sound arrogant. Instead of answering the questions that the moderator had asked of you, you typically went off on a tangent about your money or business dealings. That was all good in the business world, but America is not a business. We want to hear your policy ideas and the strategies you are going to use to implement them, not your business and capital ventures from twelve years ago unless they’re truly doing to help us for any reason.

Pro-tip: use the word braggadocious to apologize for being arrogant even when you don’t mean it!

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