refudiate

English

Etymology

Blend of refute +‎ repudiate. Often associated with Sarah Palin's infamous 2010 lapsus linguae. A few rare attestations predate the 1970s. Since then the word has been uncommon although not rare, but many written occurrences of the word focus on prescriptively refudiating its use; it remains nonstandard.

Verb

refudiate (third-person singular simple present refudiates, present participle refudiating, simple past and past participle refudiated)

1. (nonstandard) To repudiate, to oppose.
   • 1951, Rulon Wells, "Predicting Slips of the Tongue"; reprinted in Victoria Fromkin (editor), Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence, 1973, Walter de Gruyter, page 85:

     Blends are the simplest kind of slip of the tongue […] some examples […] "refudiating" (refuting + repudiating).

   • 1980 January 23, Report of Joint Commission on Prescription Drug Use‎^[1], page 1:

     […] their articles were read to determine whether the citation was to substantiate or refudiate the initial claim or was it a "quote of acceptance".

   • 1984, John Sladek, The Lunatics of Terra, Wildside Press LLC, published 2005, →ISBN, page 77:

     ‘Captain Blip? Never,’ he said, without ceasing to calculate. ‘I refudiate that.’
     ‘You what?’ Jane felt suddenly cold all over. ‘There’s no such word, Denny.’

   • 1987, Mahabalagiri N. Hegde, Clinical Research in Communicative Disorders: Principles and Strategies‎^[2], Little, Brown, →ISBN, page 317:

     The value of given data can and must be judged regardless of the hypothesis they are supposed to support or refudiate.

   • 1988 March 3, James Bilbray, quoted in Worldwide Narcotics Review of the 1988 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,^[3] U.S. Government Printing Office, page 9:

     I am going to do everything I can along with the Chairman to see this Congress refudiate the certification of certain countries that are not complying.

   • a. 2008, Alan Moore writes in the subsection, Dr. Manhattan: Super-powers and the Superpowers, pg. iii, of Chapter IV, in Watchmen, "The suggestion that the presence of a superhuman has inclined the world more towards peace is refudiated by the sharp increase in both Russian and American nuclear stockpiles since the advent of Dr. Manhattan."
   • a. 2010, David Segal quoting a marijuana seller, “When Capitalism Meets Cannabis”, in The New York Times, 2010 June 27, page BU1:

     Words are coined on the spot, like “refudiate,” and regular words are used in ways that make sense only in context.

   • 2010, Matt DeLong quoting Sarah Palin, “'Refudiating' Palin brings Shakespeare into Twitter exchange”, in the Washington Post, 2010 July 20:

     Palin tweeted that "peaceful Muslims" should "refudiate" the New York mosque being built near Ground Zero. This prompted plenty of retweets at her expense -- "refudiate," of course, is not a word.