Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America's Presidents

By Paul Dickson

"A compendious, entertaining look at our nation's leaders through words and turns of phrase." — Kirkus Reviews

From George Washington's "New Yorker" and Thomas Jefferson's "pedicure" to Theodore Roosevelt's "lunatic fringe," Richard Nixon's "silent majority," and Donald Trump's "covfefe," this entertaining and eminently readable volume compiles words and phrases that were coined or popularized by American presidents. Discover the origins of "bloviate" (Warren G. Harding), "military-industrial complex" (Dwight D. Eisenhower), "misunderestimate" (George W. Bush), "squatter" (James Madison), and other terms that have helped define American culture. The entries are listed alphabetically, featuring a definition and — in most cases — a brief discussion that places them in historical context.

"Thoroughly enjoyable." — The Washington Post

"The author is an essayist and lexicographer who presents this entertaining look at how presidents have used and shaped our language." — The Dispatch (Columbus)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780486846101

Paul Dickson

Paul Dickson is the author of more than forty books, including The Joy of Keeping Score, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Baseball's Greatest Quotations, and Baseball: The Presidents' Game. In addition to baseball, his specialties include Americana and language. He lives in Garrett Park, Maryland.

Book preview

Necessity obliges us to neologize.

—thomas jefferson

The images on pages 21, 25, 32, 38, 44, 61, 70, 83, 92, 95, 106, 108, 112, 114, 118, 125, 126, 131, 152, and 168 appear courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. All other photographs are from the author’s personal collection.

Copyright

Copyright © 2013, 2020 by Paul Dickson

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 2013 by Walker & Company, New York. The author has added a new Preface for this Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dickson, Paul, author.

Title: Words from the White House : words and phrases coined or popularized by America’s presidents / Paul Dickson.

Description:Dover edition. | Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. |This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 2013 by Walker & Company, New York. The author has added a new Preface for this Dover edition.—Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: From George Washington’s ‘New Yorker’ and Thomas Jefferson’s ‘pedicure’ to Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘lunatic fringe,’ Richard Nixon’s ‘silent majority,’ and Donald Trump’s ‘covfefe,’ this entertaining and eminently readable volume compiles words and phrases that were coined or popularized by American presidents. The entries are listed alphabetically, featuring a definition and — in most cases— a brief discussion that places them in historical context —Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019035456 | ISBN 9780486837222 (trade paperback) | ISBN 048683722X (trade paperback) indd 5

Subjects: LCSH: Presidents—United States—Quotations. | Presidents—United States—Language—History. | English language—Political aspects—United States—History. | English language—United States—Terms and phrases. | Americanisms. | Presidents—United States—Biography—Miscellanea. | United States—Politics and government—Quotations, maxims, etc.

Classification: LCC E176.1 .D528 2020 | DDC 973.09—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035456

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

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CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE DOVER EDITION

CHARTING THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR NONLEXICAL FIRSTS

I.

INTRODUCTION: BRAVE NEW WORDS

II.

HAIL TO THE WHITE HOUSE: WORDS, PHRASES, AND SLOGANS—A TO Z

III.

THE NEOLOGIST IN CHIEF?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AN INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

PREFACE TO THE DOVER EDITION

The creation of new words and catchphrases by our presidents has declined in the twenty-first century in inverse proportion to the rise in social media—a point underscored as the means of presidential communication with the American people has devolved from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s well-scripted fireside chats to Donald Trump’s impromptu tweets on Twitter. Roosevelt delivered thirty fireside chats to the nation during his years in office and by early May 2019, Trump had issued some 30,000 tweets. Roosevelt used his chats to explain his policies and help the nation cope with the Great Depression and World War II; Trump uses his tweets to lash out at others with innuendo and falsehoods.

At the same time standards for presidential speech have fallen. Woodrow Wilson was occasionally castigated for his infrequent use of the mildest, most innocuous slang. A hundred years later the current Chief Executive thinks nothing of using what one newspaper called an unpresidential word—the one referring to bovine excrement.i

A case in point: when the first edition of this book was published in early 2013, President Barack Obama’s impact on the English language amounted to introducing the term all wee-weed up to an unsuspecting world. Speaking at a national health-care forum in August 2009, he described the riled-up mood in Washington: There’s something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up. I don’t know what it is. But that’s what happens.

New York Magazine ran an immediate Nexis search for the term which showed that all wee-weed up, or wee-weed up had, in the words of the magazine, never been used before in any form of media, ever—underscoring the point that this was a bona fide Obama neologism. In contrast a Google search of wee-weed up in May of 2019 yielded some 7.5 million hits.

But what did it actually mean? The moment it was uttered it led to massive head-scratching, especially among members of the news media, which had no clue as to its actual definition. Even after press secretary Robert Gibbs explained that it meant to get all nervous for no particular reason, that did not fit in the context of Obama’s remarks which seemed to be describing a sense of partisan incivility that transcended the mere opposition which was then rising from the political right to defeat his healthcare reform plans—in other words, mean-spirited opposition with no room for or thought of compromise.

If that is the meaning of the term—which still stands as the main coinage of the Obama years—it would be fair to say that Washington’s state of being wee-weed-up became deeper with the 2016 primary season and the election of the 45th President of the United States, who became the catalyst for an even deeper level of political division. This brings us to the question of what, if any, are the terms created by Donald Trump.

The first possible neologism offered by the next president was bigly, which was first heard when he was a candidate in 2016. Bigly was listed in unabridged dictionaries as an adverb formed from the word big but which has fallen into disuse. From the outset it was clear to many that Trump was saying big league—an allusion to Major League Baseball as opposed to the minor leagues. Consider, for example, what Trump said at an event in Virginia Beach in late October 2016 in which he promised to cut taxes big league, cut regulations even bigger league. Trump’s own spokesperson Hope Hicks went on the record to say that Trump was big league. But as linguist Ben Zimmer noted at the time, Trump was using big league as an adverb which came out sounding like bigly when the final g was indistinctly pronounced. Oddly enough, the term bigly continued to appear in print outside of the context of the president and a word recently labeled obscure/obsolete is now in common use. ii

The term covfefe was coined early in the morning of May 31, 2017, when President Trump tweeted Despite the constant negative press covfefe. The tweet went viral and engendered much immediate discussion. Trump later followed up with a tweet saying: Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’??? Enjoy! The general consensus seemed to be that the term was nothing more than a typographical error that occurred when Trump attempted to type the word coverage, but that did not deter others from trying to look it up as if it were a real word. So many people queried the online Oxford English Dictionary looking for a meaning for the term that its editors declared it the Oxford Dictionaries Non-Word of the Year 2017.

Given the fact that Trump had tweeted some 30,000 tweets by the beginning of May 2019 to his 60 million followers, other typos followed, including the phrase: "Smocking Gun. As he tweeted: Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun... No Collusion, This of course made no sense but many looked up smocking on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary where they were told that Smocking" is a type of embroidery made of many small folds sewn into place.

Then there have been the verbal gaffes—typos of the tongue—which sound like new terms. Most notably he spoke of the fictitious nation of Nambia twice in a September 2017 event with African leaders. Beyond that Trump seems to favor certain pet phrases (bad hombre, fake news, etc.) but these are not his. Trump himself did claim to have invented one term. In May 2017 Trump asked journalists from The Economist whether or not they understood what he meant by prime the pump as a metaphor for stimulating the economy by adding to the money supply. He then added: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. Merriam-Webster quickly responded that the term had been in use as an economic term since 1933, which was also the year the first fireside chat was delivered.

---

i "Democratic oversight is ‘bullshit’ Trump goes off-script at CPAC. The Guardian, 2 Mar. 2019.

ii Baer, Drake. Why You Hear Trump’s ‘Big League’ as ‘Bigly’. Science of Us, 24 Oct. 2016.

CHARTING THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR NONLEXICAL FIRSTS

As a means of introducing the presidents in their proper order, here they are listed along with some of their firsts, many of which involve the means of communication, from the birth of the post office to today’s social media. The idea being to show the context into which they amended and enriched the language.

1.GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1789–1797—First president.

2.JOHN ADAMS, 1797–1801—First to live in the White House.

3.THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1801–1809—First to wear long trousers.

4.JAMES MADISON, 1809–1817—First to have had prior service as a congressman; first to have an inaugural ball.

5.JAMES MONROE, 1817–1825—First to be wounded in battle; Rutherford B. Hayes would be the second.

6.JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1825–1829—The first president to be photographed, but the photo was not taken while he was in office; the first and only president to have a son whose given name was George Washington.

7.ANDREW JACKSON, 1829–1837—First to travel by train. On June 6, 1833, he traveled from Ellicotts Mills, Maryland, to Baltimore by the B&O Railroad. He was the first president born in a log cabin—a mark of humble distinction. (Chester A. Arthur was the last born in a log cabin.)

8.MARTIN VAN BUREN, 1837–1841—First president born in the United States. All previous presidents were born before the United States became a country, although all were born in places that would later be parts of the United States.

9.WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 1841—First president to die in office. He served for a single month.

10.JOHN TYLER, 1841–1845—First to become president upon the death of another. He was also the president with the most children: fourteen.

11.JAMES KNOX POLK, 1845–1849—First president to have his inauguration reported by telegraph.

12.ZACHARY TAYLOR, 1849–1850—First president to win office in an election that was held on the same day (November 7, 1848) in every state.

13.MILLARD FILLMORE, 1850–1853—First president to have a stepmother.

14.FRANKLIN PIERCE, 1853–1857—The first president born in the nineteenth century (1804). Pierce installed the first central-heating system in the White House. He is the only president to have said I promise instead of I swear at his inauguration.

15.JAMES BUCHANAN, 1857–1861—First and only president who never married.

16.ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1861–1865—First Republican president; first president with a beard and the first born outside the original thirteen colonies.

17.ANDREW JOHNSON, 1865–1869—First to be impeached (acquitted by a single vote).

18.ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, 1869–1877—First president to view the Pacific Ocean (1852).

19.RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES, 1877–1881—First president to graduate from law school; first White House telephone was installed, by Alexander Graham Bell himself, during the Hayes administration. First Easter egg roll on the White House lawn was conducted by Hayes and his wife.

20.JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 1881—First left-handed president; first president to campaign in two languages—English and German.

21.CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR, 1881–1885—First president to take oath of office in his own home and the first president to have been accused (wrongly) of not being born in the United States.

22.GROVER CLEVELAND, 1885–1889—First president to appear in a film. In 1895, Alexander Black came to Washington and asked Cleveland to appear in his photoplay A Capital Courtship. He agreed to be filmed while signing a bill into law.

23.BENJAMIN HARRISON, 1889–1893—First president to have a Christmas tree in the White House.

24.GROVER CLEVELAND, 1893–1897—First and only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

25.WILLIAM MCKINLEY, 1897–1901—First to ride in an automobile.

26.THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1901–1909—First president to entertain an African-American guest at the White House—Booker T. Washington. First president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

27.WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, 1909–1913—First president of the Union of forty-eight states.

28.WOODROW WILSON, 1913–1921—First president to earn a Ph.D.

29.WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING, 1921–1923—First president to speak on the radio, as well as the first to have broad newsreel coverage, which means it can be argued that he was our first media president; first to own a radio and first to ride to his inauguration in an automobile.

30.CALVIN COOLIDGE, 1923–1929—The first inaugural address broadcast by radio was that of Coolidge, on March 4, 1925. He was also the first born on the Fourth of July—July 4, 1876. (Three presidents died on July 4th: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, and James Madison Monroe on on July July 4, 1831.)

31.HERBERT CLARK HOOVER, 1929–1933—First president born west of the Mississippi, the first engineer, first (and only) to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, and first to have an asteroid named for him.

32.FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, 1933–1945—First president to fly in an airplane during his term of office and later the first to have a presidential plane. The first to appear on television, when he opened the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The first president to visit South America while in office. He was the first president to appoint a woman, Frances Perkins, as a cabinet member (secretary of labor). First president whose mother was eligible to vote for him. His was also the longest administration—twelve years, one month, and eight days.

33.HARRY S TRUMAN, 1945–1953—First president to travel underwater in a modern submarine; the first to give a speech on television.

34.DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER, 1953–1961—First president to appear on color television; the first to be president of all fifty states.

35.JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, 1961–1963—First Roman Catholic president.

36.LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, 1963–1969—First to take the oath on