At this point in the election run-up, we know an awful lot about Republican candidate Donald Trump – probably more than we want to.
But there’s one thing about him that has puzzled a lot of people – his use of the word ‘bigly.’
What the heck does it mean? Is he trying to use it as you’d use a word such as ‘largely’ or ‘finally’? Would the opposite of ‘bigly’ be ‘littlely’? Is his grasp of the English language really that bad?
He has used it a lot in his campaign speeches, and it has even been transcribed and reported at times as ‘bigly.’ Some people have decided he’s actually saying ‘big league.’ Others aren’t so sure.
It turns out that it’s not his vocabulary that’s at fault, it’s his pronunciation.
Raymond Navarro of Catholic broadcaster EWTN asked him directly in an interview this week if he’s saying ‘bigly’ or ‘big league.’ Trump responded:
“I use big league.”
You can see the exchange on 25:05 in this video clip from the interview.
The fact that he’s saying ‘big league’ was also affirmed by his son Donald Trump Jr. who was asked about it after the September 26 presidential debate.
So now the mystery is over. But not before broadcast and social media had a lot of bigly fun with it. Watch this funny clip from Bloomberg, which was made before the truth was revealed. It contains all the bigly/big league confusion you can handle.
Featured image: screenshot from YouTube video
