While the MN Legislature continues to enjoy a long weekend away from the capitol, I'm taking a quick side trip through the campaign landscape. Merriam-Webster online compiled definitions of commonly used politican jargon, which can be of great help to anyone following the campaigns. (Also, their etymologies are a lot of fun to read.) Check it out!
Two of my favorites:
mugwump \MUG-wump\ noun
: an independent in politics
The Story Behind the Word
A 17th-century Massachuset Indian might not recognize his people's word for "war leader" if he saw it used today. In colonial America, "mugwump" derisively implied someone who was a "big shot." The first political mugwumps were Republicans in the presidential race of 1884 who chose to support Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland rather than their own party's nominee. Their independence prompted one 1930s humorist to define a mugwump as "a bird who sits with its mug on one side of the fence and its wump on the other."
pork barrel \PORK-ba-rul\ noun
: government projects or appropriations yielding rich patronage benefits
The Story Behind the Word
You might expect that the original pork barrels were barrels for storing pork—and you're right. In the early 19th century, that's exactly what "pork barrel" meant. But the term was also used figuratively to mean "a supply of money" or "one's livelihood" (a farmer, after all, could readily turn pork into cash). When 20th-century legislators doled out appropriations that benefited their home districts, someone apparently made an association between the profit a farmer got from a barrel of pork and the benefits derived from certain state and federal projects. By 1909, "pork barrel" was being used as a noun naming such government appropriations, and today the term is often used attributively in constructions such as "pork barrel politics" or "pork barrel project."
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