The Quotation of the Day -- and Slang Vocabulary Enrichment -- comes from John Waters

Maybe you knew before today, but until I read this in The Guardian, I had no idea what a 'Hair-Hopper' was.

When John Waters says that he has never watched a reality television show, Rebecca Nicholson asks him if he has really never seen The Apprentice, the show that brought Donald Trump to national prominence among America's couch-potato demographic.

 He answers:

“Never. No! I hated him before. I hate a hopper. A hair-hopper is someone who pretends they’re rich, who really wasn’t brought up very wealthy but now tries to brag that they’re rich, and they spend too much time on their hair.”

The Tweet of the Day for January 30, 2017

The True Blue Liberal Tweet of the Day came from @TeaPainUSA who distilled two important events into a truth bomb of less than 140 characters: 1) Donald Trump's illegal and chaotic ban on refugees and people from seven countries, and 2) The terrorist attack on the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center yesterday, where six were killed and 17 were injured, by Alexandre Bissonnette, who seems from early information to be an anti-immigrant activist who was inspired by Marine Le Pen speeches and the timing of Donald Trump's Muslim ban.

More Muslims have been killed by Trump supporters in the past 24 hours than Americans killed by refugees from banned countries in 30 years.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) January 30, 2017

As a bonus, I also have a True Blue Liberal word of the day that came from Twitter. Tonight there were massive anti-Trump demonstrations all across the U.K. inspired by Trump's draconian immigration policy alterations. I saw photos online of massive crowds in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Brighton, and elsewhere, but this photo from Scotland in a tweet from @TotallyCarolyn stood out for the poster it featured. It had nothing to do with the artistry of the hurried black scrawl on cardboard, but the words are priceless, especially the last one, which was new to me: "Yer Maw Was An Immigrant Ya Fucken Bawbag."

A message to @realDonaldTrump from Edinburgh #MuslimBan #ScotlandAgainstTrump pic.twitter.com/m0OdQvDlMQ

— Carolyn Scott (@TotallyCarolyn) January 30, 2017

Bawbag, n. Scots. Literally a scrotum (i.e., a "ball bag") and figuratively used for any annoying, useless, or stupid person. It should be used regularly in sentences about the half-Scots Donald Trump.

kak·is·toc·ra·cy. The TBL Word of the Day

Why aren't we hearing the word 'kakistocracy' more often since last Tuesday's vote? Even better than plutocracy or aristocracy or oligarchy, speaking about a government of the kakistos (Greek for 'the worst'), seems so much more appropriate in November of 2016 than talking about government by the ploutos, aristos, or oligos.

It may seem slightly unfamiliar to many today, but kakistocracy is a word that everyone will have added to their everyday vocabulary by inauguration day.

In other big vocabulary news from Oxford Dictionaries, yesterday they announced a 2016 Word of the Year that also had Trumpian and Brexit echoes: 'Post-truth'

de•us ex ma•chi•na -- The TBL Word of the Day.

Mitt Romney recently tried to play this deus ex machina role for the Republican Party's current trumpsterfuck of a primary season, but the GOP is going to need something a little more Zeus than machine to solve their Donald problem.

A hat tip to Episode 18 of the Folger Library's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast -- "Rarely Performed Shakespeare" -- which I was listening to at lunch time, and which discussed the deus ex machina of Jupiter descending on a eagle while throwing lightning bolts in Act 5 of Cymbeline.

Maybe Mitt should have channeled his inner Shakespearean Jupiter before dashing back to his beach house with the car elevators:

No more, you petty spirits of region low,
Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts
Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know,
Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts?

[The dictionary entry photographed above is from The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, 1987.]

ESTA'BLISHMENT. The TBL Word of the Day

Establishment, a French word that is being used as an epithet by a billionaire from a rich family acting as an anti-establishment rabble rouser in the GOP primaries, seemed like a good word to examine today, using the first real dictionary of the English language.

Of course, though Samuel Johnson included six definitions of the word, he didn't include the meaning the word took on in the 1960s -- a meaning that is also being revived in this year's Democratic primaries.



[Today's dictionary entry comes from A dictionary of the English language : in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers : to which are prefixed, a history of the language, and an English grammar by Samuel Johnson, 1785, available online at The Internet Archive.]

vul•gar•i•an -- The TBL Word of the Day

Have a man and a noun ever been as perfectly matched as Donald J. Trump and vulgarian?

"A vulgar person, especially a prominent or wealthy individual with coarse or conspicuous tastes and manners."? Bingo.

Graydon Carter improved on The Donald's nickname in the pages of Spy magazine by giving him immortality as the short-fingered vulgarian in that short-lived monthly's pages. In last night's GOP debate on Fox News, the thin-skinned Trump once again erupted over the issue of his tiny hands and stubby digits (and what that might have to do with the size of his penis).

"He [Rubio] hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands; I've never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands, 'If they're small, something else must be small.' I guarantee you, there's no problem. I guarantee." -- Donald J. Trump, 3 March 2016

He never heard any remarks about his short fingers before? That may be the biggest of his many lies. Marco Rubio referred to his hands because he knows what a sensitive area this has always been for Trump since a young age, when his little sausage fingers prevented him from reaching his true goal as a concert pianist.

To get back to the word of the day however, even if we hand Donald Trump the possibility that his fingers may be nearly normal size, there's no denying that he is the perfect illustration of a vulgarian.

[Today's dictionary entry comes from New Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, Encyclopedic Edition published by Delair Publishing, 1981, page 1114]

trump•er•y - The TBL Word of the Day

Occasionally on Twitter I'll include definitions of words that are appropriate for the news of the day, such as this tweet from this morning related to the word trumpery:

If you were a novelist & named your joke presidential candidate "Trump", critics would skewer your heavy-handedness. pic.twitter.com/Hg7wb0HMXE

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) March 3, 2016

Sometimes the words are less related to the news and simply a product of my love of dictionaries, but I like the idea of adding a TrueBlueLiberal word of the day on this blog (if only to keep me dedicated to updating this page more regularly). We'll see how long it lasts.

Meanwhile, please try to use today's word in a sentence.


[The dictionary entry photographed above is from The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, 1987, page 2030.]