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<h2 class="">Trump, Card</h2>
<div id="attachment_35463" class="" style="width:332px"><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2015/08/Donald_August_19.jpg"><img class="" alt="Donald_August_19" src="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2015/08/Donald_August_19.jpg" height="347" width="322"></a><p class="">“Donald August 19″ by Michael Vadon via Wikimedia Commons</p></div>
<p>It’s difficult to read any standard definition of the word <i>trump</i> and not feel that the lexicographers had an eye on the contemporary political moment.</p>
<p>The word may have never been on our lips as often as in the past
year. The Google Ngram Viewer demonstrates an enthusiasm for the word <i>trump </i>as <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=trump&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctrump%3B%2Cc0">peaking in the 1890s</a>,
back in America’s Gilded Age, after which it went into decline until
the beginning of this century. Now it seems that the media shall let no <em>trump-</em>less day go by.</p>
<p><i>Trump </i>is a feature of bridge and other card games, many of
which persist in our linguistic imagination primarily through
literature. My experience of whist is restricted to novels. But as card
players know, <i>trump </i>on its own can stand in for <i>trump card, </i>so the two terms are not easily disentangled.</p>
<p>The word <em>trump </em>has, in fact, different definitions, and they
in turn derive from several different etymologies. Depending on the
sense of the word you’re looking for and the dictionary you turn to, <i>trump </i>can be derived from Italian <i>trionfi </i>and so related to English <i>triumph, </i>or through High German to a cognate of the English <i>trumpet, </i>or through French to the verb <i>tromper, </i>meaning to deceive.</p>
<p>For example, Oxford’s online French dictionary looks at <i>tromper </i>with attention to the political, as in the example <i>tromper l’opinion publique/ les électeurs </i>(<i>“</i>to mislead the public/the voters”).</p>
<p><i>Trump </i> has, of course, many other associative meanings, frequently denoting some aspect of superiority. <em><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trump">Merriam-Webster</a></em> ranks them as three:</p>
<p>1. “a card or a suit any of whose cards will win over a card that is not of this suit”;</p>
<p>2. “a decisive overriding factor or final resource”;</p>
<p>3. “a dependable and exemplary person.”</p>
<p>As a verb, <i>to trump </i>is straightforward, aggressive, simple, positive: “to get the better of.”</p>
<p>These moments of dictionary prescience might lead us to think that <i>trump </i> is
the name of any of the contestants in the presidential sweepstakes,
since any one of them needs to get the better of all the others,
becoming “a decisive, overriding factor” one way or another, in order to
win over lesser — and therefore<em> trumpable</em> — candidates.</p>
<p><em>Trump </em>seems to bear connotations of both quiet power and big noise. The <em>OED</em> demonstrates the connections between <i>trump</i> and many senses of <i>trumpet. </i>In 1805, Sir Walter Scott’s <i>The Lay of the Last Minstrel </i> included the line <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6I9JAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=the+Lay+of+the+last+minstrel+%2B+%E2%80%9CWhen+louder+yet,+and+yet+more+dread,+Swells+the+high+trump+that+wakes+the+dead.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=w9NrhmMGNP&sig=NCzUGaWUEKDJOs_X4T1Ai8NMFqE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIzs77jIfCxwIVR1YeCh3TGwjd#v=onepage&q=the%20Lay%20of%20the%20last%20minstrel%20%2B%20%E2%80%9CWhen%20louder%20yet%2C%20and%20yet%20more%20dread%2C%20Swells%20the%20high%20trump%20that%20wakes%20the%20dead.%E2%80%9D&f=false">“When louder yet, and yet more dread, Swells the high trump that wakes the dead!”</a></p>
<p>This sense of <i>trump</i> as trumpetlike takes on a further range
of associative and imitative meanings, from a crane’s neck to an
elephant’s trunk and “the proboscis of an insect” (I pass over the sense
of <i>trump</i> as sound resulting from digestive misfortune).</p>
<p>Dictionaries are subtle things. Unlike <em>Merriam-Webster,</em> the <em>OED’</em>s sense of <i>trump </i>as an element in card games is less certain, more contingent. Thus the <em>OED</em> gives us <i>trump </i> as “a playing-card of that suit <i>which for the time being ranks above the other three” </i>[italic mine, or perhaps Hillary Clinton's]. There is risk in being <em>trump</em>.</p>
<p>Yet to “turn up trumps” is to have good fortune, to have something
lucky happen to you. On the other hand (this is very much an
on-the-other-hand term) a <i>trump </i> can be “a thing of small value, a trifle.”</p>
<p>What might be most interesting. then, about <i>trump</i> is its capacity to function as an auto-antonym, a word containing multiple meanings among which are opposites. A <i>trump </i> can be “a person of outstanding excellence” (<em>OED</em>) — or a fraud.</p>
<p>Like <i>cleave</i>, a word whose opposite meanings (to split, to cling to) are dear to readers of John Milton, the word <i>trump </i>looks in both directions.</p>
<p>And that might be the only connection this writer can draw between
the high, heroic style of 17th-century poetic politics and the national
spectacle unfolding before us, like a game of cards.</p><p><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/08/25/trump-card/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/08/25/trump-card/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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