Blagojeviching? Could this really become part of the lexicon?
Thumb through the dictionary and you’ll find plenty of examples of a person’s name that has morphed into a widely used noun or verb. For example:
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Crapper: after Thomas Crapper, a plumbing fixture salesman
Hoovervilles: the shantytowns that sprang up during the Depression, which began during the administration of President Herbert Hoover
Gerrymander: for former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who in the early 1800s drew up irregularly shaped voting districts to give an advantage to his political party.
We can come up with a working definition: Blagojevich (bluh-GOY-uh-vich) no un. a scandalous person —verb 1 to damage or cheapen 2 to complain —adj., adv. [Vulgar Slang] 1 bleeping. But would anyone use it?
Ben Zimmer, a lexicographer, said use of “Blagojeviched” is unlikely to spread beyond Illinois. “It’s simply too hard to say,” Zimmer said. In Chicago, however, we might just have a new term in our political vocabulary. One local blogger last week used the B-word three times in one sentence, writing: “I’m so blagojeviching blagojevich about Blagojevich.”