Let’s just clarify something here that the OP, as written, obscures. What started this mess was a post, by the OP, stating (I’m not using the quote function because I want to correct several spelling errors):
“In fact , No President has ever been impeached (yes, I know, due to an odd wording in the Constitution, pedants will insist that the first phase is actually “impeachment” and thus Clinton and Johnson were “impeached” but since that words means “removed from office” no they weren’t) and yes, in two cases the House voted but in the most recent case it was a opposition run House who also knew full well the Senate wouldn’t confirm.”
Whatever one might think of “Impeach Trump”, the sentence quoted above cries out to be corrected. It insists that people are wrong when they say “Clinton was impeached”. I’m not sure why that poster thinks there is some confusion between “impeach” and “impeachment”, but insisting that “Clinton was not impeached” is a factually correct statement is nonsense. No eye rolling needed when that statement is corrected because not only is it wrong-- it insists that any correction is wrong.
Now, who is the one insisting that the word has only one meaning?
Legally, impeachment is being charged with high crimes and misdemeanors by the House. There’s then a trial in the Senate, and only if the officeholder is convicted is he or she removed from office. But in common parlance/verbal shorthand, most people take it to mean “removed from office.”
It would have been nice had one of the choices actually been correct. I voted for hearing in the House, but actually it should be hearing in the House and vote passes to send to the Senate for trial.
Exactly the issue. The colloquial use of impeach to describe the entire process does not negate the validity of using to accurateky describe the House hearing/vote.
To be picky, treason and bribery are just the two high crimes and misdemeanors explicitly spelled out … the officeholder can also be impeached, convicted, and removed from office for “other high crimes and misdemeanors” too.
Actually, I think we might both be wrong. “High crimes and misdemeanors” are crimes that only a “(high) official” can commit. That covers bribery, but not treason-- which anyone can commit. Perhaps it should be read:
Treason, [bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors]" with bribery being redundant but treason not.
But if you go to the store, and wind up deciding that the milk is too expensive, so you return home without any milk, it will still be false to say that you didn’t go to the store.
And if the president goes to the store to buy milk, but commits treason instead, we can say that he did the go the store, did not buy milk, but did commit an impeachable offense.
I think here you have an uphill battle with the dictionary. You can make the argument that no redefinition is required, but when you look to the actual definitions this doesn’t bear out. Look here from google:
Now, in the interest of full disclosure I bolded the one definition (which was #3 in that sequence from M-W) that matches how you’re using the term, so I think it’s fair to say that’s one possible definition, but I would contend that’s inaccurate. When DrDeth says that no president has been impeached, or Bill Clinton wasn’t impeached, that’s wrong. The only way it’s not wrong is to simultaneously explain that the word is being used in a non-standard way.
Bill Clinton was impeached - full stop. With that, no explanation is needed. Alternatively, if you say that Bill Clinton was NOT impeached, then it does in fact require explanation, and that explanation involves defining the word in a non-standard way.
I state that it requires no definition to say that the word can mean “remove from office,” since that’s one of the definitions, and you dispute that by citing several dictionary definitions, including one that says “remove from office,” but you disagree with that one?
I’m sorry, but that’s not exactly a slam-dunk counterargument :).
Given the context of DrDeth’s original posts, in which he complains that only a pedant would think it means anything OTHER than “remove from office,” I wanna be clear that I’m not 100% on his side here. He’s wrong about that; the word has multiple meanings, and folks are not wrong to use other understood meanings of the word.
But you can’t quote the dictionary at me to show I’ll have a hard time claiming it can mean “remove from office,” when that’s one of the definitions in the dictionary.
Wouldn’t it have been better to have done that research for your post, see that definition, and say, “Huh, ignorance fought, guess it can mean that after all”?
And yeah, I could have not posted, or omitted that section, but that would not be above board. Frankly I think it’s there so that in the context of “Impeach Trump” that works but saying that Bill Clinton was not impeached is simply wrong.
I was surprised to see it there, but I never considered not posting it. M-W has lost stature for this, by a tiny amount, in my estimation:)
If you asked people what the difference between speed and velocity is, a lot of folks would say they are the same. But in physics, we say that velocity is a vector, consisting of speed (the scalar) plus direction. If I was lecturing a class in physics, I would take care not to use one when I meant the other.
In the context of a Great Debate, I would do my best to treat a legal term of art the same way. I would strive to use the legal term of art for what it means in the context of our legal system. And if I used a legal term of art incorrectly, I would welcome being connected since it means leaning something. If I was in one of the millions of internet chit-chat rooms, I wouldn’t care so much. And I hope that the vast majority of us posting on this MB don’t want GD to devolve into just another chit-chat room.
Stealing from an article (about Google and education) in the NYT yesterday … this is a bit
Yes, there is a context in which “impeach” will be understood to remove from office and when the average person discusses the possibility of Trump being impeached it usually is shorthand for that, for the full process inclusive of conviction and removal from office. In the context of stating “No President has ever been impeached”? That’s meticulously falling off a cliff.
