While reading a diary yesterday about Presidential blunders, for some odd reason ( I have no clue why ) the words blunder and Bush simultaneusoly came to mind. I thought it just might be useful to combine the two and add a new word to our lexicon: Blunderbush. After all, the word gerrymander came from a politician's name. To make certain the term made sense, I went to wikipedia to look up blunderbuss, just to be sure.
More after the flip.
Here's some enlightenment from wikipedia, with snips, of course.
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A blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a flared, trumpet-like barrel and is the predecessor to the shotgun. The blunderbuss was in use in the 17th century, and is the weapon most commonly pictured in the arms of the Pilgrims....
The funnel-shaped barrel is not designed to enhance the ballistics of the weapon, but serves to facilitate loading ammunition into the muzzle. This makes it much easier to refill a blunderbuss with shot in situations where this would not normally be possible (as when riding shotgun on a stagecoach speeding down a bumpy road)....
By its nature, the blunderbuss is not a very precise weapon. Although it was sometimes used in a military setting, it was more effective when the goal was not to hit a specific target, but rather any one of multiple targets, such as for crowd control. During combat, the blunderbuss was a very unpredictable weapon; it could hit an entire group of enemy soldiers or miss all of them. The blunderbuss thus became a byword for inaccurate marksmanship in any field. As well, the word itself came to mean "a clumsy or stupid person".
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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Does the definition of blunderbuss warrant adding a new derivative to the lexicon? Starting with the last sentence, that seems to fit. "Inaccurate marksmanship" and "shotgun"? Who does that remind you of in the administration? Hit or miss? Only good for "crowd control"? How about something so "17th century"?
Seems close enough for horseshoes and the Bush administration.
How then to use it in a sentence? Some possible examples.
How many Blunderbushes can you name? [ This may pose a problem; do we mean number of people or number of mistakes? So we will just have to deciper its meaning based upon context].
How many Iraq's does it take to make a Blunderbush?
Does Katrina qualify as a Blunderbush?
Is Cheney a proxy Blunderbush?
The Plame outing was a Blunderbush of the highest order.
Was Alito a Blunderbush?
Is homeland security a Blunderbush?
Is the administration filled with Blunderbushes?
Does the administration fill every position with Blunderbushes?
That should more than suffice.
Now class, for the poll, and using the term as meaning mistakes of the highest magnitude of this administration.