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So, Which Is It: Bigly Or Big-League? Linguists Take On A Common Trumpism

Donald Trump addresses supporters during a campaign rally in Cleveland on Saturday.
Jay Laprete
/
AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump addresses supporters during a campaign rally in Cleveland on Saturday.

The final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton wrapped up last week, but a post-debate argument raged for days afterward: Is Trump saying "bigly" or "big-league"?

Many took to social media questioning what the Republican nominee could be saying.

Some even criticized him, saying bigly isn't a word.

But it turns out bigly is a word, says lexicographer and Merriam-Webster editor Kory Stamper. "Bigly is, in fact, an adverb," she says. "It's just a really rare adverb that doesn't have much use today."

Bigly's meaning has also changed through the years.

"It originally meant violently or strong," Stamper says. "Over time, it actually came to mean pompous or in an arrogant manner, which is kind of ironic."

So, bigly is a word. But is that really what Trump is saying? Many people argue that Trump is actually saying the phrase big-league — includingSusan Lin, professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The phonetician studies speech and the sounds that people produce when talking.

She noticed the question over Trump's words during last Wednesday's debate. To answer it, she went back to the first general election debate and analyzed Trump's speech patterns.

Linguist Susan Lin performed an audio analysis of Trump's speech during the first presidential debate. According to her analysis, he was saying "big-league."
/ Courtesy of Susan Lin
/
Courtesy of Susan Lin
Linguist Susan Lin performed an audio analysis of Trump's speech during the first presidential debate. According to her analysis, he was saying "big-league."

"With some of the tools at my disposal, I was able to do an acoustic analysis to show — at least in this specific example of 'big-league' that I pulled out — Donald Trump is definitely pronouncing that with a final G," Lin says. "He's definitely saying 'big-league' in this specific recording and not 'bigly.' "

This phrase isn't new to Trump's vocabulary. Ben Zimmer, language columnist at The Wall Street Journal, says Trump has been using the phrase for decades.

"I've found examples of Trump using it in interviews going all the way back to the 1990s," he says.

This includes the introduction to the first episode of The Apprentice.

But is he using the phrase correctly? Zimmer says it's complicated: "Big-league, when it gets used in slang, generally is an adjective that modifies a noun," he says. "What Trump does is, he uses it as an adverb modifying a verb."

Here's an example: "We're going to win big-league." The phrase big-league is modifying the verb "win."

"That's a bit unusual in American slang usage," Zimmer says. "I think most people, if they were going to use a slang term in that adverbial use, they might use 'big time.' We're going to win 'big time.' "

At a rally Saturday at Virginia Beach, Va., Trump himself helped put an end to the debate. Talking of economic policy, clearly enunciating, Trump told the crowd he would "cut taxes big-league, cut regulations even bigger-league."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Victoria Whitley-Berry (she/they) is a director and producer for Morning Edition. She also briefly helped to produce NPR's history podcast Throughline. They joined NPRin 2016 as an intern for All Things Considered on the weekend. Born and raised in Tallahassee, Fla., Whitley-Berry has a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Texas Christian University.