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Some US presidents have made a valuable contribution to American English as we know it. One popular example is Founding Father and third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson, who is credited with the introduction of 110 new words.
Throughout the years, many US presidents coined new terms and popularized old ones, and in this gallery we take you all the way back to 1796 to bring you some of the most famous words and expressions popularized by US presidents. Ready to learn all about it? Click on.
The word “administration” was introduced by George Washington in his Farewell Address in 1796. The nation’s first president said: “In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.”
The word derives from the Latin administrationem, and it means cooperation, direction, aid, or management. Administration is now used to describe the time a president holds office.
President James Madison used the word in a 1788 letter to George Washington to make reference to homeless people in Maine living on other people’s lands. The letter read: “Many of them and their constituents are only squatters upon other people's land, and they are afraid of being brought to account.”
English professor Allen Metcalf and lexicographer David K. Barnhart said that "squatter was an undignified word, chosen presumably to express disapproval of the practice.”
President Martin Van Buren did not coin the term, but he did take advantage of it as a hip popular word at the time. So much so that he used it in his 1840 election campaign.
Van Buren's nickname was Old Kinderhook (a reference to his hometown), so OK also became associated with the president for that reason.
You're likely familiarized with the term “First lady,” but the wives of presidents didn’t always go by that title. The original term used to address a president’s wife was “presidentress.”
President Zachary Taylor changed this in 1849 when he praised Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, saying: “She will never be forgotten because she was truly our First Lady for a half-century.”
In 1861, president Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Congress stating: “With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than 30 years, until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government.”
It turns out, the expression wasn’t very well received, with government printer John Defrees telling the president “you have used an undignified expression in the message.” Lincoln stood by it nonetheless, saying “That word expresses precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it.” The word is still used to this day to express something superficially made to seem more pleasant or attractive than it actually is.
You’re probably familiar with the name given to the revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, but they haven’t always been called “founding fathers.” The term "framers," as in “Framers of the Constitution,” was more popular back then.
But then, in 1918, Warren G. Harding changed it all. The then-Ohio senator said that "It is good to meet and drink at the fountains of wisdom inherited from the founding fathers of the Republic." The term stuck and it’s still used to this day.
“Lunatic fringe” was the name of a women’s haircut in the 19th century, but it was later popularized by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1913. While today the term is used to describe people with non-mainstream, fanatical, or extreme political/social views, Teddy Roosevelt used it in a completely different context: an art exhibition.
President Roosevelt wrote in his 1913 book ‘History as Literature:’ "It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand, often the fossilized dead hand, of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement. In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the word “iffy.” He’d use it for instance when replying reporters’ hypothetical questions, saying things such as “that’s an iffy question.”
FDR used the word to make reference to answers that would be full of “ifs” or to indicate that something was still undecided.
You may associate the word with the idea of returning to normal, but it was not until then-candidate Warren G. Harding’s speech “A Return to Normalcy” after World War I, that the term became popular. It read: “America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums (remedies) but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.”
At the time, the Daily Chronicle of London wrote that "Mr. Harding is accustomed to take desperate ventures in the coinage of new word." While the word was not new, it was rarely used. Instead, "normality" was the more popular term.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower is credited with coining the golf term “mulligan” during a game in 1947. A mulligan is a second chance to perform after something went wrong (e.g. due to a blunter). Effectively it’s an extra stroke after a bad shot.
It has been argued that the term goes all the way back to a 1920s golfer named David Bernard Mulligan. Still, next time you request a mulligan, thank president Eisenhower for it.
The word used to describe the legal right to use and enjoy something was made popular by Thomas Jefferson. In 1789 he wrote a letter to James Madison that read “I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society.”
You may recognize the French word that means appointment or meeting. In 1964, way before Ronald Reagan became president, he said in a speech: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.”
The iconic phrase however had been used before by Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he spoke at the 1936 Democratic Convention. FDR said: “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
In 1815, President John Adams made a reference to Cervantes ‘Don Quixote’ when he described a Venezuelan revolutionary who wanted to unite Spanish America as “a Quixotic adventurer.”
President Thomas Jefferson is the man behind the word “belittle,” which essentially means to make something or someone seem unimportant. Jefferson used it in ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’ in 1781, where he wrote "The Count de Buffon believes that nature belittles her productions on this side of the Atlantic."
The word wasn’t very much appreciated across the pond, with London’s ‘The European Magazine’ writing “Belittle! What an expression! It may be an elegant one in Virginia, and even perfectly intelligible; but for our part, all we can do is to guess at its meaning. For shame, Mr. Jefferson!”
You know those people who go on and on, and do so in a pompous way? Well, you can say they’re bloviating. President Warren G. Harding described bloviation as "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing."
In his 2011 State of the Union address, president Barack Obama said: "This is our generation's Sputnik moment … We need to reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the Space Race." The term is a reference to the Soviets launching a satellite in 1957, catching the US by surprise. It essentially emphasizes the idea that the US must catch up with the development of other countries.
Fake news was all the rage a few years ago, so much so that in 2017 the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Year. The expression became one of President Donald Trump’s most famous catchphrases.
“When President Trump latched on to fake news early in 2017, he often used it as a rhetorical bludgeon to disparage any news report that he happened to disagree with. That obscured the earlier use of fake news for misinformation or disinformation spread online, as was seen on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign,” explained Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words Committee.
Malarkey is a word used to describe “nonsense” or “meaningless talk.” The word derives from an Irish surname and political cartoonist Tad Dorgan is said to have coined it in 1922. Joe Biden famously used the slogan “No Malarkey” in his 2020 campaign.
When asked about it, President Biden explained: “It’s aptly named — the reason we named it "No Malarkey" is because the other guys all lie, so we want to make sure there is a contrast, what we’re talking about here.”
Sources: (History) (Business Insider) (Merriam-Webster) (USA Today) (Online Etymology Dictionary) (Your Dictionary) (Voice of America)
See also: Old English insults we should definitely bring back
Words and expressions popularized by US presidents
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CELEBRITY Vocabulary
Some US presidents have made a valuable contribution to American English as we know it. One famous example is the Founding Father and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, who is credited with the introduction of 110 new words.
Throughout the years, many US presidents have coined new terms and popularized old ones, and in this gallery we take you all the way back to 1796 to bring you some of the most famous words and expressions popularized by US presidents. Ready to learn all about it? Click on.