Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Bush disassembles English language, again

David Pescovitz at 7:14 pm Tue, May 31, 2005

— FEATURED —

Science

Last chance to enter the Armchair Taxonomist challenge!

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

Book Review

We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir

Science

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
When asked at today's press conference about Amnesty International's report criticizing America's treatment of detainees, President Bush called the claims "absurd." According to the White House transcript, he also said:
"It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth."
My brother Bob Pescovitz comments, "I always thought 'disassemble' meant 'to take apart,' but maybe that's 'dissemble.' But his wife is a librarian so I guess I'm wrong."

Even more ridiculous than Bush using the wrong word is the fact that the Chicago Tribune had the nerve to kindly correct his mistake when quoting him! Link to White House transcript, Link to Chicago Tribune article (republished at KansasCity.com, BugMeNot's login worked for me. Email: icantkick@mailinator.com, Password: oregon1)

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who pointed out that "dissemble" was yesterday's Dictionary.com "Word of the Day." Link

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

Comments are closed.