Born out of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s “cryptic” Tweet
at the end of May 2017, could covfefe safely qualify as 2017’s “word of the
year”?
By: Ringo Bones
At the time, the folks at Merriam-Webster had been sitting
out on this Trump neologism but just after midnight in Washington, DC back in
May 31, 2017, U.S. President Donald J. Trump Tweeted: “Despite of the constant
negative press covfefe.” That was it, no name, just that word “covfefe” left
hanging there. It has left many of Trump’s 31 million Twitter followers baffled
and slightly concerned. But what does covfefe mean – most of my internet savvy
friends theorized that Trump may have been confusing a CAPTCHA check as an
actual word – as in a French derived English word perhaps?
Though the covfefe Tweet has not just made Trump “famous”
enough to cause a temporary internet meltdown, the president’s Tweet had
managed to take the heat off U.S. comedian Kathy Griffin, who had earlier been
under fire for posting a video in which she held a replica of Trump’s severed
bloody head. Well, at least it is way better than Trump dissing Muslims and
Mexicans on Twitter.
