In a recent post, I conjectured that some Bushlingo malapropisms must have originated when their bookless coiner parroted words that he had heard in speech but had never seen in print. I gave two examples: the meaningless "resignate" for "resonate" and the wildly off-target "commiserate" for "commensurate." Bushlingo offers other examples of such self-betraying approximations.
Drawing from his profound well of historical knowledge, our deep president has mused that Americans are endowed by their creator with "uninalienable rights." He has also proclaimed his disbelief that advertisements contain "subliminable" messages; he has threatened that an Iraqi who does not cooperate with us will be "persecuted"; he has made the claim that corporate "malfeance" has affected our economy. The inerrant President has also whined that he's been "pillared" in the press. "Pillared" might mean "strapped to a pillar," just as "stocked" used to mean "set in the stocks," but more likely it's a Bushlingo invention for "pilloried" -- an unusual word far beyond the President's ninth-grade ken. In all these cases the President, whose attention span appears to be minuscule, has managed the first syllable --"res," "com," "sub," "mal," "pil" etc. -- just perfectly but hasn't had the old-fashioned American stick-to-it-iveness to persevere all the way to the end of the word.
Though no doubt Bush embraces a dark belief in the "fallacy" of human beings, his Calvinism would be more theologically orthodox if he had pushed past the opening "fal" and managed the full five syllables of "fallibility."
The transformation of misunderstood or incorrectly reproduced oral forms also occurs in the incomprehensible assertion that "however they delineate, quotas vulcanize society." To vulcanize is to add sulfur to raw rubber to make it tougher and less elastic. What sort of mysterious social alchemy is envisioned in the presidential use of the word vulcanize? Is it possible that he meant to say "Balkanize?" Balkanization generally refers to a political situation in which larger entities are subdivided into small competing units, as occurred in the Balkan peninsula. But where in the world would Bush have encountered such a hard word? Only orally. My guess is that he was briefed by some foreign policy assistant who insufficiently dumbed down his presentation, and the Education President heard a V where a B was in fact spoken.
On occasion, POTUS reveals that he's using a word that he has recently stumbled upon, as in his observation that there are enemies of the United States who "had been trained in some instances to disassemble--that means not tell the truth." It sounds very much as though he had recently been introduced to the word "dissemble" and, monkey-hear, monkey-speak, attempted to replicate the word in his own conversation. He generously added a bonus syllable, and then, evaluating his audience by his own dim light, thoughtfully explained the meaning of the novel word. No doubt his audience was galvanized.
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