{"id":527757,"date":"2010-04-14T10:40:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T14:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2249"},"modified":"2010-04-14T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T14:40:19","slug":"proud-of-insinuating-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/527757","title":{"rendered":"Proud of insinuating involvement?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Kenneth P. Vogel, “GOP operatives crash the tea party<\/a>“, Politico 4\/14\/2010:<\/p>\n

As for the bus tours, [Sal] Russo said \u201cthey work for us. It\u2019s a great vehicle to go to a lot of places and get a lot of people involved and engaged. I am proud of what we do. Who else goes out there and motivates people and insinuates involvement and activity and actually is making a difference in what is going on?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

It surprised me to see Mr. Russo taking credit for insinuating<\/em> something.<\/p>\n

The relevant OED gloss for insinuate<\/em> is “To introduce tortuously, sinuously, indirectly, or by devious methods; to introduce by imperceptible degrees or subtle means”.<\/p>\n

The American Heritage Dictionary has “To introduce or otherwise convey (a thought, for example) gradually and insidiously”.<\/p>\n

Merriam-Webster online has glosses of<\/p>\n

1 a : <\/strong>to introduce (as an idea) gradually or in a subtle, indirect, or covert way <insinuate doubts into a trusting mind> b :<\/strong> to impart or suggest in an artful or indirect way : imply <I resent what you’re insinuating>
\n2 : <\/strong>to introduce (as oneself) by stealthy, smooth, or artful means<\/span><\/p>\n

Encarta has “to hint at something unpleasant or suggest it indirectly and gradually” or “to introduce yourself gradually and cunningly into a position, especially a place of confidence or favor”.<\/p>\n

I doubt that Mr. Russo would characterize his actions as “devious”, “insidious”, or “covert”. Instead, he seems to have used insinuate<\/em> to mean simply initiate<\/em>. I looked around for other evidence of an insinuate=initiate <\/em>trend, but didn’t find anything much, except for a completely different malapropism insinuate=intimate<\/em> (“H20 soluble liniment enhances a comfort as well as ease of insinuate activity…”).<\/p>\n

[The political issue under discussion is the role of Russo, Marsh, and Associates in the Tea Party Express <\/a>bus tours and various other “Tea Party” branded activities.\u00a0 And as usual, we need to note that the word-substitution might have been the reporter’s (or a spelling-corrector’s) rather than the source’s.]<\/p>\n

[Update — I’m persuaded by Mr. Fnorter’s suggestion in the comments that the intended word might have been\u00a0 instigate<\/em> — note that there was a flap last year<\/a> when Maxine Waters apparently said that Castro “insinuated revolution to kick out the wealthy”, which seems to be a similar malapropism.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Kenneth P. Vogel, “GOP operatives crash the tea party“, Politico 4\/14\/2010: As for the bus tours, [Sal] Russo said \u201cthey work for us. It\u2019s a great vehicle to go to a lot of places and get a lot of people involved and engaged. I am proud of what we do. Who else goes out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}