September 8, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The oft used word ‘refudiate’ by Sarah Palin was named as the Palin word of summer by the reputed dictionary publishers Merriam-Webster. They declared the made up verb to be the most searched word of their online dictionary.

Palin, the vice presidential candidate in 2008 and the former governor of Alaska used the word twice last July. She had referred to it at a news conference for the first time and reiterated it on her tweet where she requested the peace loving Muslims to ‘refudiate’ their plans of building a mosque near ground zero.

She had however replaced the word soon after changing it to peaceful New Yorkers who should refute their plans of building a mosque. But what did she actually mean by it? She posted another tweet in response arguing that the entire contretemps was Shakespearean. Words like misunderestimate, refudiate and wee weed up are all English and the language is living with new words being coined all the time. She concluded her tweet with the words, “Got to Celebrate it!”

Well, we have the Presidents Bush and Obama to thank for the weird coinages of misunderestimate, and wee weed up respectively. AP reports that the other summer words that gained popularity were” inception” and “despicable” with ‘opulent’ used extensively to describe Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.

The Californian News 10.net describes the Palin summer word ‘refudiate’ as the most searched pseudo-word. It is certainly a fake word which has no meaning whatsoever. Whether it comes to be accepted as a part of English language remains to be seen. However, it may be counted as an English word if Palin does manage to become President some day.