New Word of the Day

Sometimes, a new word is coined whose name has clearly come. Today's (ok, last week's) new word is jeterate, which was defined last week by baseball writer and blogger Joe Posnanski as follows:

jeterate (verb) meaning “to praise someone for something of which he or she is entirely unworthy of praise.”

Here are a couple of Posnanski's examples:

Example: “The father could not but jeterate his daughter for coloring on the wall because she looked so cute.”

Example: “The doctor jeterated his patient for not actually gaining any more weight since the visit four days earlier.”


This word, of course, is named after Yankee shortstop (and future Hall of Famer) Derek Jeter, who has been an excellent player for many years and will obtain his first-ballot election to Cooperstown (and deservedly so!) after he retires. The thing is if you listen to Yankee fans, broadcasters, writers, and other fetishists, you get the impression that he can't do anything wrong, is the best thing since sliced bread (this is an odd expression, don't you think?), etc. It just gets on lots of people's nerves---especially, for example, when people praise his defense even when he has been one of the worst-fielding shortstops in the Majors for years! The argument one typically hears after questioning this is typically along the lines of "If you saw him play every day, you'd see that he deserves a Gold Glove for his stellar defense." I quite obviously hate that argument rather passionately. Every single bloody person can make the exact same argument about their shortstop or anything else---it's just impossible to refute and is basically another way of saying "I want to bear Derek Jeter's child and I really don't give a flying fuck how good a shortstop he actually is." It just pisses me off sometimes, so I very much appreciate this new terminology!

In sum, I approve! (Tip of the cap once again to Rob Neyer, who linked to Posnanski on his blog.)