Politics dictionary
Trumpian
[truhmp-ee-uhn]
What does Trumpian mean?
°Õ°ł³Ü³¾±č¾±²¹²ŌĢżis an adjective form for President Donald Trump. The term is especially used by critics to characterize his language, conduct, and policies.
Where does Trumpian come from?
The term Trumpian is found as early as 1988 in an issue of Yachting magazine, where a reviewer, calling up Donald Trumpās 1987 The Art of the Deal, describes Dennis Connerās book The Art of Winning as being āwell within a Trumpian vein.ā The next year, an issue of Sports Illustrated called small, charming villages that the Tour de Trump bike race ran through as being āas un-Trumpian as Montgomery Ward,ā an American retail catalog and department store.
Alluding to Donald Trumpās growing and sensational celebrity status, a 1990 example of this term referenced āTrumpian headlines in the tabloids.ā In the early 1990s, Trumpian especially characterized large-scale business failures (āa Trumpian tumbleā) or financial woes (āTrumpian debtā), alluding to the real estate mogulās own difficulties at the time. These early uses figure Trumpian as āexcessiveā or āostentatious,ā alluding to Donald Trumpās notoriously bombastic personality and aggressive, grandiose approach to doing business.
Trumpian took off after Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015. Thanks to how many view Trumpās rhetoric and conduct, Trumpian began to describe blustering, narcissistic behavior and a brazen disregard for truth. Others began use Trumpian to characterize racist, sexist, and xenophobic ideologies, authoritarianism, and an angry brand of populism. After he won the White House in 2016 following an unorthodox campaign, some observers have taken to describing the broader culture under Trumpās candidacy and presidency as the Trumpian era, which has witnessed a spike in racism, sexism, bullying, and political subjectivity.
Examples of Trumpian
Who uses Trumpian?
While the term is occasionally used to refer neutrally to Donald Trump himself (e.g., a Trumpian policy as a āpolicy pursued by Donald Trumpā), Trumpian is more widely used a pejorative term for people, actions, or philosophies that are felt to evoke Donald Trumpās beliefs, mannerisms or over-the-top demeanor. Since Trumpās election as president in 2016, Trumpian has come to embody what opponents of Trump supporters see as the defining qualities of Trumpās political ideology: sexism, racism, xenophobia, arrogance, a deluded love of self, and a willful lack of truthfulness. For example, when actor Michael Keaton played McDonaldās founder Ray Kroc in The Founder, he referred to Kroc in an interview as being Trumpian, stating that Kroc was āless than ethical.ā
There have been attempts by some politicians, such as Newt Gingrich, to use the phrase Trumpian in a positive, complimentary light in regard to Trumpās unconventional, anti-establishment, ātell-it-like-it-isā approach to politics, but these uses of this sense of Trumpian are in the minority.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of Trumpian like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of Trumpian that will help our users expand their word mastery.