Palin invents word 'refudiate,' compares herself to Shakespeare

By Matt DeLong

UPDATE 12/27/10 3:02 p.m. ET:

Politico reports that Sarah Palin addressed her now-infamous "refudiate" tweet (see below for the backstory) on Sunday's episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." She now says it was a simple typo:



While in the car, Sarah also talked to Todd about the time she tweeted the word "refudiate." "I pressed an F instead of a P and people freaked out," said Sarah, pointing out that her blunder was the second-most-searched word on Google trends. "Make lemonade out of lemons," said Sarah.

At the time, Palin acknowledged in a tweet that she had created a new word, without saying anything about a mistake (the "F" and "P" keys on a QWERTY keyboard are not near each other). Moreover, Palin spoke the word "refudiate" in a Fox News appearance before she used it on Twitter:

(Updated 12/28/10 at 8:06 a.m. ET)

ORIGINAL POST 7/19/10:

The Twittersphere erupted Sunday when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tweeted that "peaceful Muslims" should "refudiate" the mosque being built in New York City near where the Twin Towers once stood. Palin found herself the butt of many tweets, as refudiate, of course, is not a word in the English language.

After deleting the offending tweet, Palin replaced it with another calling on "peaceful New Yorkers" to "refute the Ground Zero mosque plan," which only added to the confusion because it would appear the word she was looking for was "repudiate." Then came the kicker: To quell the vicious Twitter-ribbing she was receiving, Palin unleashed yet another tweet comparing herself to no less than the Bard of Avon.

Naturally, this led to a very entertaining Twitter meme, #ShakesPalin, in which participants revamped classic Shakespeare quotes, Palin-style (and of which Reason's The Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez was arguably the champion).

A good time had by all.

As a postscript, Mediaite points out that this is not the first time Palin has used the word "refudiate." (Watch at the 1:05 mark).