The Merriam-Webster dictionary said Wednesday that the word “impugn” is trending, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren “impugned the motives and conduct” of Sen. Jeff Sessions.
Warren, D-Mass., got into trouble Tuesday night by quoting Coretta Scott King and others who were criticizing Sessions in the mid-1980s when he was seeking a federal judgeship.
“Impugn spiked on February 7, 2017, when the Senate voted on party lines to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was reading a letter written in 1986 by Coretta Scott King about Senator Jeff Sessions in opposition to Sessions’s nomination as attorney general,” the dictionary’s website said.
Senate rules prohibit senators from maligning other senators either directly or indirectly. As a result, Republicans voted to block Warren from speaking for the rest of the debate on Sessions’ nomination to be the next U.S. attorney general.
According to Merriam-Webster, “impugn” is a verb that means, “to assail by words or argument.”
