“I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words.”

This is one of Trump’s many infamous lines that make him as quotable as Oscar Wilde - for polar opposite reasons. If only Wilde were still alive to encapsulate in one catty sentence a situation that has left the most loquacious among us dumbfounded. Just as Dolly Parton famously remarked how expensive it was to look that cheap, perhaps there’s an uncomfortable truth in this: it actually does take someone highly educated to pretend to be that stupid.

Donald Trump used many rhetorical linguistic devices to tap into the raw emotions of potential voters - and it worked. In this election, every lexical rule got tossed, twisted and trumped. Here are some of the language mechanisms he used:

Braggadocio

Trump relied heavily on superlatives to ramp up an emotional response to his grandiose claims. Things weren’t big, they were “yuuuuuge”. He wasn’t just going to make things great again, they’d be “amazing”, “tremendous”, “the best”. He wasn’t just going to win. He was going to “win so much, you’re going to be sick and tired of winning”. It’s the aspirational language of the American dream that has, superlative by superlative, slowly transformed into a nightmare.

Binaries

The divisive “us and them” rhetoric was used to full hateful effect by Trump. Either you’re part of the crusading Judeo-Christian west, or part of terrorist, destructive Islam. Either you’re a “criminal alien” or a hard-working, hard-done-by American. You’re “legal” or “illegal”. That “us and them” rhetoric of the campaign trail seemed to be diluted by the time he called for unity in his victory speech, though.

Hyperbole

In addition to personal boasts, Trump was prone to exaggeration and dramatisation. “The whole world is blowing up,” Trump would claim when discussing one country, Syria. When introducing Reince Priebus in his victory speech, he was described him as a “superstar” three times in two sentences - a bold claim for a man few have heard of outside the Washington bubble.

Euphemisms

Trump could play something down, as well as up. His most infamous euphemism, of course, was “locker room talk” - a supposed justification for admitting to “grabbing women by the pussy” without their consent.

Half-finished sentences

Trump is the master of the incomplete phrase

Listen to Trump in this clip. “They’re trying to justify i ... can you believe i … I have the best wo ...” This stuttering, interrupted form of speech is a hallmark of his seemingly off-the-cuff delivery. It mimics natural conversation patterns. Feeling less scripted, it has been designed to appear authentic, trustworthy and passionate, rather than scrutinised and autocued by a hundred advisers.

Grammatical maturity

Presidential candidate language has declined in complexity, according to a common algorithm called the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. It crunches word choice and sentence structure then gives grade-level rankings. George Washington’s language reached graduate-degree levels. Abraham Lincoln’s was 11th-grade. And Trump’s? Right down to fourth grade. Was he really saying “bigly” like a fourth grader or “big league”? The answer seems to be both.

Repetition

Trump punctuates his speeches with repetition. It hammers the point home when the crowd is rambunctious and words risk getting lost. But it’s also a delaying tactic, giving him time to select his next choice of words. On his news nemesis: “That’s wrong. They were wrong. It’s The New York Times, they’re always wrong. They were wrong.” The repetition isn’t always at the end of the sentence; sometimes it’s brought to the beginning for emphasis, a technique called anaphora. “I call it extreme vetting. I call it extreme, extreme vetting.” Or even book-ending repetition in a sentence like this from his victory speech: “Tremendous potential. I’ve gotten to know our country so well — tremendous potential.”

Verbs

Their most commonly used verbs revealed much about the tone of their campaigns; Clinton’s included “hope”, “support” and “try”. Trump’s were full of mansplaining and more binaries: “tell”, “lose”, “win”, and “stop”.

Sexist and racist language

Trump pejoratives “bad hombres” and “nasty woman” have become so infamous that they’re already being parodied and reclaimed on merchandise.

Nomenclature

What people were called mattered more than ever in this election. What they weren’t called was even more significant: Michelle Obama’s refusal to even utter Trump’s name, while roasting him robustly, spoke volumes by declining him the dignity of an identity in her speech. Hillary’s tactic was to keep it on first name terms. Trump’s name became handy for punning purposes (“love trumps hate”) and also an aptronym, for being synonymous with a fart. Hillary’s tripartite Presidential initialism, HRC, moved her maiden name to her middle name. It’s the Rodham that said: I am my own woman, not just his wife.

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough.

Gary Nunn is a regular contributor to Mind your language @garynunn1