Is it just me, or has the verb “to double down” only recently been used in American political commentary (often to describe Republican politicians who are repeating questionable assertions)? I predict that we will soon see the noun form, as in “that was a double down”  … followed by an inevitable merger of the two words, first by hyphen, “double-down,” then as “doubledown.”

Indeed, I believe I just made my own “doubledown” above.

I mentioned this to a good friend in the media about this. He wrote me:

“Republicans have the country (or at least a consistent, small majority) behind them. Plus, now they’ve got the president on the run and everything they do, no matter how cynical, how destructive, how malicious, works for them and stains the Democrats. Why shouldn’t they double down? Remember how I told you I felt as though my country had broken up with me after Bush won in 2004, then asked to get back together in 2008? I fear it is about to suggest we see other people.”

My buddy pointed out additional new buzzwords: “’Granular’ has replaced ‘detailed’; ‘optics’ has replaced ‘visuals’; and ‘metrics’ has replaced ‘statistics.’ ‘Meme’ and ‘trope’ seem to be very trendy, too.”