[Ads-l] Adjectival or Attributive Use of "Democrat" Not in OED

[Ben Zimmer]

In a 1984 column, Safire quoted Harold Stassen, who took credit for Wendell
Willkie's 1940 presidential campaign adopting the "Democrat Party" usage.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/magazine/on-language-banned-words.html

Geoff Nunberg noted in a 2004 Language Log post that it's now easy to find
antedatings, including Hoover's use in the 1932 campaign.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001565.html

Geoff gave pejorative examples back to 1923, adding, "The phrase occurs
before then, but it seems to have been regarded more as a rusticism than as
a partisan dig."

JL last discussed the usage in these parts in Feb. 2021.

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2021-February/159290.html

--bgz

On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 10:05 PM Jonathan Lighter <
00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> A search of Newspapers.com revealed to me some years back that "Democrat
> Party" was interchangeable with "Democratic..." during much of the 19th
> century, even among Democrats.
>
> ISTR too that Republicans reinvented the usage as a pejorative as long ago
> as the 1930s or '40s.  I don;t believe I've ever heard an acknowledged
> Republican say "Democratic Party" in decades, if ever.
>
> I thought I had posted this info, but if so I can't find it.
>
> "Demonrat Party" is, of course, always pejorative.  It has replaced the
> milder "Dummycrats."
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 8:59 PM Shapiro, Fred <
> 00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > I notice that a pretty significant U.S. political usage is missing from
> > OED, namely the adjectival or attributive use of "Democrat," as in
> > "Democrat Party."  I believe that this has been a semi-standard word-use
> > among Republicans, presumably because back when they thought democracy
> was
> > a good thing they didn't want the enemy party to be associated with the
> > good-sounding word "democratic."  William Safire, in Safire's Political
> > Dictionary, regarded "Democrat Party" as having been launched in 1955.
> > When I do database searches, it seems that "Democrat Party" was common
> well
> > before 1955.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>

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