Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Etymology

Names of people sometimes take on a meaning of its own because of what their bearers did. In politics, Gerrymander was originally the name of the person who first came up with the nefarious idea of redrawing the map of electoral districts in order to achieve a desired election result, but now it's a verb: "gerrymandering". In Scandinavia, a "quisling" was synonymous with a traitor long after Vidkun Quisling's despicable actions during the second world war.

The problem with the name "Trump" in this respect is that it already has a literal meaning: to "trump" something means to make something better which was already good. Donald J Trump, illegitimate and unbelievably incompetent 45th President of the United States, has done the exact opposite: he took a country that mostly worked sort of OK and broke it.

To "trump" something is not obviously going to become a neologism meaning "to make a complete mess of something out of incompetence". On the other hand, Donald Trump is doing some truly appalling things, so we might see a word shift in meaning from positive to negative because of what he is doing.

In any case, the name Trump will forever be tainted, for good reason.