"Axis Of Evil" Makes The Oxford Dictionary

[matcom]

<snip>

LONDON (Reuters) - George W. Bush is mocked for strangling grammar. But he can hold his head up high in the new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations published on Thursday.

The U.S. President makes a respectable first appearance in one of the world's most famous reference books with his notorious "Axis of Evil" speech about Iran, Iraq (news - web sites) and North Korea (news - web sites). Bush, long renowned for his malapropisms, has in the past offered such gems as misunderestimate, embetter and resignate.

But Oxford dictionary editor Elizabeth Knowles works on very different criteria for new entrants in the revered tome.

"You look at the quotation, not at their linguistic dexterity," she told Reuters.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), Bush's closest ally in the war on Iraq, is given prominence for waxing lyrical in appropriately Shakespearean tones in the lead-up to the conflict: "This is not the time to falter." Intriguingly the latest edition of the famous sayings book first published in 1941 highlights how history has a way of repeating itself when it comes to the memorable soundbite.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=1&u=/nm/20040909/od_nm/arts_quotations_dc

[stellanoir]

1. "axis of evil"-

definition- the most simplistically idiotic label a president has ever given to three volatile nations during a SOTU speech which then inspired two of those three nations to go nuclear.