With the liberal world wringing its hands and barely able to digest its falafel, parsley, mint and cilantro wrap at the unfolding Brexit/Trump populist tragedy. I have been able to rise above it all and have already identified the likely legacy of the Trump Administration - a new form of grammar. Satirists have latched onto BIGLY as part of the absurdity in communication that the leader of the free world indulges in. SAD!!
"I'm going to cut taxes bigly, and you're going to raise taxes bigly."
"We're going to win bigly"
"..they're taking it over bigly"
History is now being re-written as Trump having said 'big league'. If that is the case I will be disappointed as bigly has a noble tradition as an adverb. Thomas Hardy used it in Far From The Madding Crowd,
"I don't see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at for nothing!" concluded the small woman, bigly." (Chapter 30)Trump is clearly paying homage to the British bucolic miserabilist poet, I suspect not fully intentionally, but a diet of Fox News and Breitbart may lead one into an English fantasist reverie that spawned the like of Hardy's Overlooking the River Stour (1916) when being oppressed by fake news from all sides
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam
In the wet June's last beam
Like little crossbows animate
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam
Actually I think that is just me. It is my safe space whenever I accidentally come across Sean Hannity (the US equivalent of Piers Morgan). Incidentally they are the possessors of the two most punchable faces in the Western hemisphere.
Anyway I digress. I don't think Trump uses bigly as an adverb, and definitely not as an adjective, but as a curious new grammatical term - the advective. Part adverb, part adjective, part invective, part adenoid. Yet again one of the many unique innovations bestowed upon humanity by the great man.
He has brought to a screeching halt the dropping of the 'ly' in everyday English speech patterns. Have you quietly fumed when a football pundit opines that, 'the lad played exceptional'. Or bitten on your hand so hard that you drew blood when sitting on the Clapham omnibus and you overhear a young lady state confidently that she had applied her, 'lip gloss perfect'.
Trump has not only given us lies, he has given us LYs. All hail to the chief. He has reclaimed the endangered two letters lost to modern speech. Not only that he has repealed, reworked and reinterpreted it - just like Obamacare.
I hope he takes it further, perhaps all his future lies are told 'tallly', his Syrian options aren't taken 'nuclearly' , and his presidency is prematurely 'curtailedly'.
ALL HAIL TO THE CHIEFLY
