Rush Limbaugh Pounces on Harvard Prof’s Words

Melissa E.B. Franklin is used to being at the forefront of particle physics: Discover Magazine described her as one of “the most important women in science” in November 2002. But earlier this week, Franklin, who holds the Mallinckrodt chair in physics at Harvard, found herself at the cutting edge of the English language when—in an interview with the Boston Globe—she described University President Lawrence H. Summers’ remarks on women in science as a “resignable thing.”

“It was one of the those things you wish you hadn’t said,” Franklin told The Crimson Wednesday night—not because she regrets the sentiment, but because she appeared to have coined a brand new word.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, while blasting Summers as a “liberal Clintonista,” pounced upon Franklin’s grammatical irregularity in a segment of his radio broadcast billed as a “feminist update” Wednesday.

“I’ve checked three dictionaries, all of them online,” Limbaugh said. “‘Resignable’ is not in any of them. So this erudite, elitist professor at Harvard used a word that doesn’t exist.” He accused Franklin of filling young minds with “mush.”

Franklin was nonplussed. “If he wants to think I’m a stupid person, that’s fine,” she said of Limbaugh. “I think it’s hilarious.”

But, as a self-described friend of Franklin noted on a weblog Wednesday, the Harvard particle physicist is not quite a lexicographic trailblazer. In October 2003, after Limbaugh—formerly an ESPN commentator—drew fire for racially insensitive remarks about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, a Limbaugh fan on a conservative website wrote: “even if Rush was just wrong in what he said, why does this rise to a resignable gaff?”

“Resignable” first appeared as early as July 10, 1990, when the New York Times used the word in an article on a chess match in Moscow.