[Ads-l] Covidiot

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sun Mar 22 19:50:01 UTC 2020


I know "covidiot" appeared earlier, e.g. this tweet from Feb. 26 calling
Trump "COVIDIOT-45":

https://twitter.com/RebeccaNewell7/status/1232663460380631040

...but I was interested specifically in the faux dictionary entry that was
circulating yesterday.

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 3:16 PM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There's an Urban Dictionary definition dated March 14.
>
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Covidiot
>
> Video example (not hashtagged, but might as well be):
> https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1241485175915048961?s=20
>
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 11:56 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 5:46 AM Hugo <hugovk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Some tweets yesterday:
> > >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > Definitely should be included in the next edition of the Oxford English
> > > Dictionary #Covidiot https://t.co/rW0heLNWoD
> > >
> > > https://twitter.com/OfficialTerry1/status/1241415992447766531
> > >
> > > See the last one for a definition in the image.
> > >
> >
> > After seeing this shared on social media yesterday, I was curious to know
> > who first posted it. Compared to most faux dictionary entries, it's
> pretty
> > high quality (down to the correct IPA!). This is the earliest I've found
> > (timestamped at 2:20 am on Mar. 21), but I doubt it's the original...
> >
> > https://twitter.com/nisheethsharan/status/1241248368384335872
> >
>

------------------------------------------------------------
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