Sometimes a suffix isn’t just a suffix, or its omission can be an insult. Where the prepared text of the State of the Union speech last week referred to the "Democratic majority," President Bush dropped the "ic" syllable during delivery. That apparently inadvertent echo of Ronald Reagan irked Democrats, for whom "Democratic" is the preferred adjective. "He spends an entire speech talking about reaching out and working together, and a few people who apparently haven’t gotten the message run out and they complain that the letters ‘ic’ were missing from ‘Democratic,’" White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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