Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin signs copies of her book, "Going Rogue" for soldiers at the PX Exchange at Fort Hood, Texas in December 2009.
Last summer, after Sarah Palin mistakenly used refudiate in a tweet about the controversial Ground Zero mosque, she tweeted, '"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'Palin reads Shakespeare?! Seriously, though, there may be times when you don't want to just refute or repudiate, and only refudiate will do. Of course, in all likelihood The Bard intended to coin his new words; Palin, on the other hand did not. She deleted the original tweet. And, as TIME noted, "Word nerds and literary buffs didn't take kindly to Palin comparing herself to Shakespeare, and turned her quip into comedic gold." Hence, the #shakespalin hashtag, where Twitter users wrote Shakespearean quotes, Palin-style. In the end though, the New Oxford American Dictionary could hardly argue with the reach of the word, and — while noting that Palin wasn't really the first to have used it — declared it the 2010 Word of the Year.