Covfefe: 2017’s Word of the Year?

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.