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Barack Obama's success in this week's primary contests took place despite an all-out effort by the Clinton campaign to paint him as "elite." Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg describes how the meaning of elite has changed over the years and psychologist Drew Westen explains why being labeled an elitist can be so damaging.
Earmarks were brought to the center of the political spotlight this week in President Bush's State of the Union speech. Once an insider term pertaining to the process of allocating funds, it is now a dirty word synonymous with pork. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman explains how this evolution is mostly political and ultimately inaccurate.
With a tricky definition and a lag-time to compile statistics, it may take up to a year to know if we are indeed in a recession right now. In the meantime, the media speculate. Critics from the left and right weigh in on whether the media jump the gun by invoking the R-word and David Wessel, economics editor for the Wall Street Journal, explains the word's place in the newsroom.
Robert Mukasey was confirmed this week as attorney general. The process moved the definition of waterboarding into the spotlight. As media struggle to find out what the interrogation technique entails, the working definition has been "simulated drowning." But those who've experienced and performed it say it is drowning. Two newspaper editors weigh in.
We all use filler words like um or uh but it’s rare that we hear them in movies, news broadcasts or … uh … this show. Author Michael Erard explains that verbal blunders and hesitations reveal more than we think.
In the parlance of Republican-primary politics, “sanctuary” – as in sanctuary city – has become a bad word. In our occasional series we call Word Watch, ABC News political correspondent Jake Tapper and linguist Geoffrey Nunberg explain how a term rooted in religion was turned into an epithet.
Have you ever encountered a rootkit or a lifehack? Do you know what it means to be squicked? These neologisms were all runners-up for the coveted distinction of the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2005 Word of the Year. Erin McKean is the New Oxford editor-in-chief. She explains to Bob, among other things, the difference between an IDP and an IED.
Brooke muses over the word that takes its meaning from a onetime Supreme Court nominee, whose unsuccessful bid for the bench earned him a place in Webster's: to bork.
